About Something Fragment

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I know there is something I’m searching for in art but when I try to identify it, it seems almost impossible to do so accurately. I identify my desire as a desire for art that’s “about something,” and contrast it with a feeling I so often have seeing art that’s “not about anything.” I also, at times, refer to this art that’s “about something” as art that’s connected to the world, to life, to everyday life, to life outside of art, to politics or to emancipatory struggles. And I contrast it with art that’s “not about anything” which I relate to formalism, empty formalism, technology, technique, art about art, art that focuses on a particular art historical referent or figure or art that tries to be purely in the moment. However, none of this says anything about in what way I want this art to be “about something,” and I suppose that’s where the problems actually begin. Because, for me, this being “about something” also has to be fully, yet ambiguously, integrated into the ways this art is and becomes art.


[Unfinished.]



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