Art Reboot

39 The West just assumed that it was way ahead of the game, and expected the rest of the world to follow meekly along. And so it did. China, despite being far more mature aesthetically, was tempted to adopt western ideas about art, alongside political ideology and three-piece suits. One unfortunate consequence of this global misunderstand- ing was that it fundamentally misrepresented the nature of the modern western revolution. Instead of recognising its signifi- cance as an act of emancipation after centuries of subservience, it was mistakenly reframed as a collection of revolutionary ‘isms’ – Dadaism, abstract expressionism and the rest of the Ism Gang. But these were just skirmishes in the revolution, not the thing itself. The underlying transformation became obscured while the individual elements were glamourised. The result is that even today we are no closer to understanding the fuller meaning of one of the West’s most explosively creative cultural episodes. Instead, we continue to focus on surface novelties rather than depth of meaning. This is the best reason for seeking true maturity in our arts, rather than celebrating so-called modernity. Once art is fully mature, profundity of meaning trumps novelty of surface every time. Realising this will free future generations of artists from banging their heads against a wall of illusory innovation. Western artists would do well now to wholeheartedly embrace multi- culturalism, to gaze beyond western modernism as the arbiter of expression and look to a culture that has been involved in exploring profundity in the visual and other arts for more than a thousand years. If we aspire to sagacity, we should seek sages.