I'm starting to feel old-fashioned

I attended a lecture this evening, "In Praise of Impurity: Universalism vs. Geo-Aesthetics in Contemporary Art," given by David Elliott, a world-renowned curator of contemporary art, former president of the International Committee for Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art, formerly of the Oxford Museum of Modern Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and now Artistic Director of the 17th Sydney Biennale in 2010.

Elliot strove to unpack "universalism," rightfully dismissing it as Eurocentrism that has violently carried the torch of enlightenment across (its) foreign lands, conquering and colonizing along the way. So, Elliott asks, if universalism isn't really universal, if there cannot be a universal, then what is the alternative? "Geo-aesthetics," he considers, which posits that art and culture (and I assume this would extend into any other realm postmodern identity touches) exist entirely uniquely and particularly in relation to their place and people of origin, and thus cannot properly, or rather genuinely, be appreciated, understood, or engaged with by those outside of or non-native to that particular culture, people, region, language, or tradition.

But Elliott doesn't believe this, either. Instead, he makes a great case, mostly through an incredibly encyclopedic presentation and discussion of historical and contemporary images of both ancient and modern art, for the fact that art and culture were meant to be "global" from the start, that globalism is not a new, foreign concept to art and culture, but rather that it has been occuring for centuries (we can imagine just one example, the Chinoiserie styles and trends of aristocratic Europe in 18th century), and that it is suddenly evident because the pace and rate of transferrance of global culture is now so rapid. And particularly in contemporary art, it is one huge international exhibition after another, and artists can no longer create for a small, local, familial circle and think their work can't or won't be shared with the world one way or another via a myriad of technologies.

I imagined an artist working in a studio with just an inkling of a feeling that she is producing for millions of people the world over and competing for recognition among hundreds of thousands of other artists continents away. An incredible contest, if you think about it (in that way). And what must she be thinking when attempting to translate it for the world's language (English), everything and everyone she's never seen across vast oceans? Does it stay particular and we pretend to understand? Does it translate quaintly, quietly, ferociously, eloquently, seamlessly, fluidly, erotically, exotically, neurotically, novelty? I mean that, novelty . . . All of it? Who draws these lines, expounds upon these meanings? Surely not the masses, must be the monarchs.

You see, something else happened recently. I watched Who Gets to Call It Art?, a documentary about Henry Geldzahler, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's very first curator of "contemporary art" in the early 1960s, when the Met wanted nothing with to do with contemporary, or any artist alive. As one artist interviewed for the film put it, everything you saw in there was "dead."

So there is foreign and there is dead. Distant and ancient. I studied contemporary art for four years, and I must tell you, dead is refreshing. I long for history, it is not greater, but it is a journey to a destination we'll never reach, and they always say it's all about the journey, so can't it all be about the history sometimes, too? To be consumed, surrounded by, the deadness of the Metropolitan, I feel truly alive, or at the very least overwhelmingly intrigued. Maybe this is what happens to us when we are sparked and stimulated by something eerie and distant and not local, one overwhelmingly difficult to conceptualize but oh so beautiful and un- (or only?) imaginable.

To what extent are we limited? Elliott says we are not, that we can only impose those limits ourselves. I like that, to think I can at least find pleasure in the experience of viewing or imagining or interacting with something from long ago or far away. Can I claim to understand it in the way someone else, anyone else, would? Of course not. Does that deligitimize a sense of appreciation for it? I don't think so. Understanding of it? Most definitely, it alters it. I fail to understand a great number of things, as do all of us, an always-already condition of the bounds of understanding and comprehensibility. But will something I understand in a culturally-specific way benefit from sharing it with others who cannot understand it that way, but only (and thankfully) perceive and conceive of it from their own cultural position? Yes. That would be part of the beauty of globalism, no doubt, and the best way to learn.