Post- to Neo-: The Art World of the 1980s by Calvin Tomkins

“In 1980 … more than a hundred galleries in New York concentrate on showing contemporary work (as against a dozen or so in 1960), American colleges and universities turn out close to fifteen thousand arts graduates a year, young men and women schooled in the talismans of vanguardism and fully sympathetic to what Harold Rosenberg called “the tradition of the new.”

Nobody is obliged to cut off his ear in this society. Is it possible, in fact, that the practice of art today has become too easy? All those college grads know that art is whatever the artist decides to make (or not to make, if he happens to be a Conceptualist), and the key question–How Do You know You’re an Artist?–rarely gets asked. One decides to be an artist, acquires a B.F.A. or M.F.A. degree, and after that whatever one makes must be art.

Having no dominant style to assimilate or rebel against, the young artist confronts a limitless range of possibilities; it could also be argued that this makes the practice of art more difficult than ever. Where originality is so highly placed, mere novelty obtrudes. Any number of budding talents appear sui generis to a fault. “

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