His Marilyn peice in '62 was the nail in the coffin for the avant guarde.
Being rebellious and contrary ended with his workman-like style and using commercial subjects to cash in on pop art. The desire to create paintings that have a revolutionary and contrary meaning to the establishment, has since faded away. We are seeing the fresh new ideas in video games instead and they were made to be saleable and agreeable products from day one. Its very difficult to get people to see a video game that truly challenges the status quo.
We are yet to see a peice of art or media that really challenges the world, since the 60s.
All the power is in the online platforms and data, that are used to target people with ourageous ideas. Art production has turned into a normal everyday machine, like the dishwasher or hot pockets.
Of course video gams are made saleable and agreeable, they are among the most expensive mediums to make. If you want unusual challenging or irritating, you need cheaper production then that. And people play them for completely different reasons then "being rebellious" - they play them because everyone plays them.
That being said, how do you define "challenges world"? Because I am pretty sure I can find challenging pieces made after 1960 regardless of what your definition of challenging is. They are just not mainstream.
There was a time when the mainstream view on art was led by academia and the political status quo. There was an opportunity to upset the system by producing a collection of artworks that bucked the trend and opposed the powers-that-be. Simply doing that act had power in itself, bringing the new idea into being, had potential for radical social change. The modern era in particular had a few revolutions of thought and art-style. They were social leaders in themselves. Art history goes over them, like Dada, constructivism, ect.
Now anything that breaks the trend is drowned out with money and/or censorship.
The banana taped to the wall a few years ago inspired people to think about how much art costs to buy, and how art is a money-laundering front for rich people. There was little discussion and sight of the original intent of the piece as a humorous comedy. It did not change how people view society, the world or art. It is seen as a clever man who could sell a $2 banana for $120k, rather than a comment on what art means. The piece has been captured by neoliberal economics (as if it ever meant to be anything else).
The video game Hatred [0] was a misanthrophic mass killer who goes on a genocidal crusade. It was banned from steam and panned by reviews. I don't endorse the content of the game, though it perfectly demonstrates the stifling lack of power any particular piece of art has to change people's minds today. You have to be approved by the internet's gatekeepers to be seen and heard. The act of creation has to be matched with the audience interacting with your artwork and a single image of your game does not have the same impact as a Dada artwork did in the 1900s.
>And people play them for completely different reasons then "being rebellious"
I agree (partly). The advent garde is dead, the power is with the tech platforms to change society, not art. So there are no "free thinking creatives", there are just technologists who push internet platforms further and further into people's lives. That's where the "free thought" is. Art is entirely ordered and almost completely chaos-free.
Knowing what Hatred is, it mostly demonstrates that mediocre game with no ambition to change minds does not have power to change minds. I mean, authors did not even intended to change peoples minds and the only thing the game had going for it was the controversy. And even that controversy was possible only because it was during gamergate years, the same game would not gain notoriority today. Had there been no controversy, you would not know the thing exists even (and you could buy that game, while not being on steam it was easily accessible).
And it is completely odd to have "change the world" expectations on art form that has very specific demographic as an interest, is super time consuming to interact with and have tendency to create own world isolated from the rest of world.
In any case, it sounds to me that what you want is the major power institution using art to make change to society from top down rather then individual artists experimenting and rebelling.
The Hatred example was to show the power of the gatekeepers. I dont really have a better example of oppositional art lately, which adds to the idea that its gone. Maybe SUPERHOT's 'obey' motif may qualify barely.
I don't want any of that stuff, per se. I'm just saying its gone.
I dont understand how you came to the conclusion that I want institutional power over society, when the advant garde was exactly against that. The institute had power and it was sucessfully rebelled aginst. No longer.
If you want a better recitation of art history look up Camille Paglia. Its more provoking and better explained over a lecture than trying to jam it into a comment.
Hatred is available on steam right now. (Just checked.)
Hatred was available to buy, even as it was not on steam. Steam is not like apple store - you can sideload windows apps. It does not even show warning like alternative to playstore would. And the bad reviews did not made it impossible to get. The controversy around it likely just added to sales.
Hatred shows only that some games don't make it to the steam. Steam was always historically super selective in what they allow. Quite openly so. The steam community was historically even more selective making it hard for new genres to go in at first.
> I dont understand how you came to the conclusion that I want institutional power over society, when the advant garde was exactly against that
I think they're trying to explain what they see as existing rather than what they want to exist.
The second issue is that there are individual artists experimenting and counter-cultures but the current "economics of creativity" mean these are almost immediately stolen, distorted and released for mass appeal.
> The banana taped to the wall a few years ago inspired people to think about how much art costs to buy, and how art is a money-laundering front for rich people.
Before that, we had Artist's Shit [1] in 1961 and countless similar stunts. I'm under impression that the main thing art does today is rebel and "force to reflect". Perhaps that's why almost no one is interested in it, as what it has to say is usualy quite shallow in its message (capitalism sucks, we get it) and also not very linked to the actual piece (The pieces often require lengthy explanation on what the artist was actually trying to say).
The counter-culture of 'rebellion' doesnt stay the same. The most recent star wars films focused on 'resistance' instead. It's an opposing force to a current trend.
I don't care that no-one was interested or not, the key part is that the content of the discussion centred around money.
If people weren't interested in the subject of artistic comdy and they expressed that, there would be evidence art still matters. Wrapping up people's disinterest with a conversation around money, shows it's dead art. Shallow or deep, interpreted or not.
The fact that you guys are still deflecting from the idea that art is less potent, is in itself a sorrowful confirmation of the idea.
> We are yet to see a peice of art or media that really challenges the world, since the 60s.
I think we've seen so much challenging since the 1950s that perhaps everything that could be challenged was already challenged to death by multiple artists and there's nothing else left to challenge.
News to Andy Warhol I'm sure, who lived until 1987.