How was Baudelaire defining the modern artist for example? He was defining (the artist) as an idle man. An idle person, idleness must be eliminated, excluded from the working process. It has really to be excluded from people's daily life and it is something that deserves the least salary. For Henry Ford, every gesture that is done by a worker during his daily life, should produce something, in order words, it has to be equivalent of salary. The history of modern art is really a quarrel between the idleness and virtues of freedom and the rationalization, evaluation of time lived. The artist is always the person who struggles against this separation in work time. For this reason, many works of art have concentrated on idleness starting with the beginning of 20th century. Artists like Langert, Jack Lang and conceptual artists like Stanley Brown. Their works of art consist of idleness. For example, in 50's, 60's Thiery Moens was a member of the realists; he was also talking about a big idleness between signs. And we see how these two worlds are opposite to each other. Both of these two worlds are big and the quarrel between these two worlds will also constitute the history of modern art in 21st century.
On one hand there is an inclination for the realization of the gestures that should be done in the factory, the rationalization of mass production and the creation of consumption objects, and on the other hand, in spite this, we see the trends that try to decrease the importance of the objects against the gesture. In other words, on one hand gesture disappears in the name of object, on the other hand the object disappears in the name of gesture. At the same time, after the evaluation of this gesture, the prevention of any kind of waste, for example the prevention of energy and time waste, which is really a basic waste. In this case we can say this: There was a period in history, where those two worlds were not opposite to each other and the art was mostly included in the society. The society also was not in opposition , the producers were not contrary to their society. However that is not the case any more. In this regard, there are more interesting activities, applications and works in the shared area between these two parts.
From NICOLAS BOURRIAUD's lecture 'TODAY'S ART PRACTICE' - 21.09.2001
