This week I received a copy of Prime, The Next Generation of artists [Phaiden]. It follows the Vitamin series in canvassing the art world as a predictive summation rather than writing in retrospect as is the case for every other book on my shelves.

Some 700 artists born after 1980 were considered as representative of the millennials and the list eventually cut down by a panel of hundreds of experts. I’ve seen such lists before and while they bring into focus the practices of artists from all over the globe, in some respects they are meaningless. The basis for choice always seems to come down to the taste of the committee doing the selecting. There is no doubt that this book represents a new generation and that there are quality artists all over the world, but the inference of a new direction is misguided. The majority of the artists selected are working with figuration infused with their own cultural bias. Several were channeling the Post-Impressionists, there was one recognisable hangover from early De Kooning and the mottled surfaces of a Golub popped up innumerable times. It would appear that the era of appropriation isn’t yet over.

In spite of the cross-media aspect, there was a conservative, safe feel to all of the choices. Isn’t contemporary art supposed to challenge the status quo? Or have we moved far beyond the idea of art as provocateur and into the picture-decorative? However, if saleability is the only measure of inclusion, then that is a whole different matter. With the notion of an art market revolving around art fairs, the Phaidon approach makes sense. The committee chose what they thought would sell.

There was one Australian included – a latter-day member of the Boyd family. Interestingly for me though, was the comparison with the recent Adelaide Biennale of art, still on display at the South Australian State Art Gallery. The theme of a ‘free state’ was willingly taken up in acknowledgement of South Australia as a state without a history of the 19^th century convict dumping ground but even a cursory examination of the work on offer from artists mostly in a similar millennial age group demonstrated a completely different view of current art. There were few, if any, pictures let alone depictions of the figurative kind and while a number of artists were recognised as having first nations heritage, the thematic inference was quite different to the choices made by the Phaidon art experts. Now I’m not saying that one collection of works and artists was better or worse than the other but more that the focus is a product of narrowed thinking on the one hand and an attempt to curate a direction on the other.

Contemporary and ‘modern’ art has been subjected to so many attempts to rationalise not just its existence but its ability to absorb and respond to philosophical ideas. The ideas of Romanticism and Classicism were no different in their day. Prior to modernism the changes in art evolved slowly with a centralised academy controlling acceptance in England and France. Lack of change was as much due to the conservatism of the academy as the simple fact that people did not travel far from home and artists, if they did travel, went a familiar route through the Grand Tour of antiquity. The evolution of trains, cars and planes put a stop to much of that and the great melting pot of art history invited artists to Paris and other urban centres bringing with them a pot pouri of ideas from outlying western cultures. Picasso tramping through the museums of ethnology as a forerunner to Cubism wasn’t so much a recognition of African and Polynesian ceremonial art as on a par with the efforts of a thousand years of Renaissance thinking as a hint of novelty with which to shock a complacent art establishment. We would now seem to be so unshockable that a return to comfortable figuration in the hands of Phaidon is the only way forward while Adelaide represents no more than a blip or aberration.

Phaidon are however to be lauded for recognising such artists from such diverse backgrounds, but cultural figuration is of its time and place. By its very nature, it represents a moment in time. As an indication of a universal change in artistic direction, of a way of thinking and working that goes beyond its origins, it is limited. What this collection does demonstrate is the lack of a direction in contemporary art. We have been programmed to believe and understand that progress in art involves change. Was any of this change evident as it occurred or is historical retrospectivity the only guide? Moreover, was it just luck that certain individuals were picked out as precursors while others had to wait a lifetime for recognition – if they were recognised at all [ the van Gogh Syndrome] during their lifetimes. It seems to be such a hit and miss process despite the assurances offered by Biennales and expensive art books written and compiled largely after the event. Would a Bridget Riley have moved from fringe Op Art at the Whitechapel Gallery at the back end of London if the fashion industry hadn’t taken her ideas to heart and clothed everyone in geometric patterns? Who knows. Would an eccentric Chagall working with myths and memories of a Russian Jewish upbringing have risen to the heights or been relegated to the realms of the quirky Sunday painter had he and his work not been promoted? He hardly fitted the mantle of a radical modernist innovator.

The question in my mind is whether the predictive art compendium concept is of value at all. Attempting to predict the future has always been a flawed activity and even artists lauded in their time, vanished into the ether as tastes changed. A bulky catalogue to a biennale has its uses – until the next one comes around. Such volumes could take up much shelf space. Provided that you have the time and the energy you could trawl though all of the online gallery sites in the world or indeed journey between contemporary galleries and make up your own mind about what is in vogue or worth preserving. Endless magazine subscriptions might also help. To get a sense of where art is going may be a valid activity but the sheer magnitude of the task beggars belief and it is not something you’d be doing on a weekly basis unless you were paid to do so.

So, it all comes back to whether you accept the prognostications of others or not. The ‘next big thing’ of the music industry often comes down to a ‘one hit wonder’ heavily promoted and quickly forgotten. Is it any different with art? In one respect it isn’t. An art book lives a very long time and its digest of its time lives with it. Books, after all, are precious symbols of culture and civilisation to be preserved at all costs in spite of the remainder bins filling faster than they can be emptied and their contents pulped. Any predictive art compendium will no doubt follow suit as it its premise is overtaken by reality.