Sales, recognition and respect are just jam in the end but having said that, either Greenberg or Rosenberg, amongst pre-eminent art writers, considered that there was no such thing as progress in art. All art exists at once, in the same time, in the same space – and we’ve now got the internet to prove it.
So, what in the end is chance for an artist? There are any number of amateur abstract painters and resin pourers with a firm belief in the physical ability of malleable paint to create something pleasant with little human intervention. It is good that they find simple satisfaction in doing so but, as with Bacon, an understanding of the nature of art as opposed to accident is key.
Even Noah, much vaunted survivor of existential flooding, was instructed to preserve only human and animal kind. No mention was made of Art or antiquities.
One of the peculiarities of artists is their stubbornness. I
Art is ‘difficult’ while Craft is ‘easy’, and Art is based on ‘ideas, feelings and visual qualities’ while Craft is the ‘right use of tools and materials’. Do any of these labels actually help? Probably not.
Not that long ago I could define Abstract art as work without a formal, recognisable subject and essentially, centripetal.