Art without audience

One of the main characteristics of our era is the irrepressible drive to offer our own opinions in any field, on any subject. This even takes place in the restricted field of art – especially in art – but not there alone, where the reaction to the figure of the author has established a form of symbiosis between the artist and the spectator. By placing himself before the artwork no longer as an author, he is integrated with an anonymous audience that collaborates, or wants to collaborate, in the creative process, up to the point where the roles are completely reversed. As spectator, the artist places in one moment the emphasis on the artwork and its contents, on the problems of the objective world, which are relevant to an increasing number of human beings, and not on the particular personal visions that energize and animate him; fragments of a lost origin.
The result are descriptions, generic declarations of intent that anyone individual from among the crowds that attend museums and art galleries could share; spoken assertions that express with sufficient exactness the obvious opinions of this mass of people. This does not yet mean that artists know the audience they are addressing or the world they share; but rather that the desires coincide.
This, willingly ignoring the fact that: “No poetry is aimed at the reader, no painting at the spectator, no symphony at its listeners.”