Nuit Blanche.

This weekend I went to Toronto and attended an event called 'Nuit Blanche'. Nuit Blanche is an art festival that is becoming a yearly tradition for Toronto. To sum it up quickly, you're given a map at the beginning of the night when you go to the first exhibit (located at OCAD - the Ontario College of Art and Design) and then you're expected, or at least encouraged, to spend the entire night, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., walking around the city looking at different displays of art. Initially I was excited for the event; my friend had been telling me it's a huge night with all different kinds of art for all different kinds of people and this idea appealed to me. However, I regret to say my time there was, well, regrettable.

I didn't encounter a single piece that spoke to me - I found every piece of work to be at least one of three things: irrelevant, poorly done in a technical sense, or simply shallow. This was very disappointing.

When I look at past great works of art, I see technique; I see beauty, thought, point, purpose, representation, significance and creativity. Last night, all I saw were flowery pots, over-the-top performance pieces, extravagant but shallow installations, lazy paintings and uninspired quilts. This all sounds very cruel and perhaps I'm completely off and this is all uncalled for; maybe what I encountered last night really was magnificent art and I just didn't get it. This is very probable because I tend to be overly critical, but at the same time I feel what I'm saying has at least some validity. People have just lost 'something', whether it be creativity as a whole or just the flare of originality, that 'something' is truly gone and I don't like it.

I think there are a lot of things that have happened to the artist's of today to make them the way that they are. One is that my generation is completely coddled; you cannot tell someone these days that they are wrong. We're all just meant to be tolerant and open-minded in every situation no matter WHAT is being said, unless of course it offends someone: what a vicious cycle. This has made the new artist a pompous breed; a collection of people who are simply right just because they have to be. How can you be composer if you can't hear the scales? You can't, and that's my point.
Another aspect is that we're a media driven age. Yes, Andy Warhol and many like him devoted their work to the media and used their art as a critic and illustrative device as to how the world was changing. They already did it, so why is EVERYONE doing it? Yes, I get it, media is bad, but it's not THE ONLY THING that's bad...in fact, there are A LOT of things going on right now that are much, much worse. Paris Hilton is a horrible role model, yes....but you know what's worse? World hunger, pollution, twisted governments, endangered species, unfair trade: there are a bundle of bad things in this world...why is all of our artists' attentions going towards something as fickle as the media?...Because we live and breath it, therefore we paint about it.

Artist's seem to ignore the use of social constructivism or mimesis nowadays, and I don't see why. The work they produce now - it's stagnant. The work at Nuit Blanche depressed me - all I saw were cookie-cutter copies of things I have seen before, and I don't want that. I want to be provoked; any emotion would be good, I just want to feel something and unless the artist's of today step out of their comfort zones of recycled ideas and fabricated artist statements, I fear a lifetime of perpetual disappointment awaits me.