[Blind Eye Jones]

If the post moderns have their way art will be pushed even farther into the absurd, for example, art can only be viewed by scientific equipment (a merger of science and art) or art can only be done by the genetically cloned, hence there will be no art until the future, or shocking art can done but only if it can also be undone (mantling and dismantling a bomb)...

OK, I'm making this up but my point is that this approach goes nowhere fast and has make a mockery of itself for almost the last hundred years. I think that 'creativity' and 'artist' are now distinctions that are accessible to everyone so that anyone can be an artist and partake in the activity, an activity generally believed to be a good thing. But these distinctions have now been leveled to the point where they are meaningless: there is no content, everyone feels included and it only encourages self satisfaction. Equality in the arts means a flattery of the public and its tastes: the bourgeois don't want to believe that they are bourgeois. Thus equality has no place for real genius and it rather proclaim what isn't art (whateveryone can do) is now art.

[stacytec]

The notion that art can be re-defined by anyone is absurd. I think of art movements as type of unilateral conformity to a standard made chic by one person. The originator breaks ties with old conventions and all others follow. Does that make the old conventions any less relevant/passé or the new form more desirable? It is demand for art and the tastes of individuals that give relevance to particular works. The movement from which that work comes is a minor accompaniment.

[RightWhale]

That's true. Still, a painter with skill and a good eye is still capable of saying a lot more than someone who has a vague itch in the ennui.