Exhibitions, Italy, Genoa, Genova, 13 May 2011
http://jizaino.net16.net/glo/arg/je_con-temporary2.html
Highbrow, Lowbrow... Middlebrow. Is Art a matter of eyebrow?
The lowbrow term has been used by the Seattle's gallerist Kirsten Anderson in order to give a name to that movement, until then indefinite, of artists considered of low profile by the art system. The term was coined in opposition to highbrow, that metaphorically defines something of highly cultural profile (from the snobbery way to raise an eyebrow, weighing one's own culture over the others).
Thus Lowbrow Art defines that underground artistic movement of popular descent, little interested to an intellectual involvement with the high culture or the fine arts, and which rather finds its own origins in the culture of comic strips, Punk, Street and Graffiti Art, often borrowing the subjects which are often very hard.
We are talking about a populist movement enumerating a large number of practisers and a wide and hardly catalogable production. Maybe for these reasons, Lowbrow Art is not taken in good consideration by the art system and the critics, who have to do with outsider artists characterized by the multiform and uncontrollable vulgarization of the expressive languages, which, being extraneous to the academic world, result hardly understandable.
But, may it exist an Art which is “in” or “out”? Creating an artistic apartheid, it would approve the idea that Art must be subdued to restricting parameters, either technical skill or academic coherence. It is not so: Art is in primis a way to communicate feelings and concepts that could not be expressed otherwise; the manner and the technique are just of secondary importance.
On the other hand, also the Lowbrow movement does not like the hegemony of critics and art system dominated by marketing logics.
Nevertheless, few years after the birth of Lowbrow, to be considered artists of low cultural profile became undesirable to some, therefore the movement evolved in the more qualifying Pop Surrealism.
(continues...)
Highbrow, Lowbrow... Middlebrow. Is Art a matter of eyebrow?
The lowbrow term has been used by the Seattle's gallerist Kirsten Anderson in order to give a name to that movement, until then indefinite, of artists considered of low profile by the art system. The term was coined in opposition to highbrow, that metaphorically defines something of highly cultural profile (from the snobbery way to raise an eyebrow, weighing one's own culture over the others).
Thus Lowbrow Art defines that underground artistic movement of popular descent, little interested to an intellectual involvement with the high culture or the fine arts, and which rather finds its own origins in the culture of comic strips, Punk, Street and Graffiti Art, often borrowing the subjects which are often very hard.
We are talking about a populist movement enumerating a large number of practisers and a wide and hardly catalogable production. Maybe for these reasons, Lowbrow Art is not taken in good consideration by the art system and the critics, who have to do with outsider artists characterized by the multiform and uncontrollable vulgarization of the expressive languages, which, being extraneous to the academic world, result hardly understandable.
But, may it exist an Art which is “in” or “out”? Creating an artistic apartheid, it would approve the idea that Art must be subdued to restricting parameters, either technical skill or academic coherence. It is not so: Art is in primis a way to communicate feelings and concepts that could not be expressed otherwise; the manner and the technique are just of secondary importance.
On the other hand, also the Lowbrow movement does not like the hegemony of critics and art system dominated by marketing logics.
Nevertheless, few years after the birth of Lowbrow, to be considered artists of low cultural profile became undesirable to some, therefore the movement evolved in the more qualifying Pop Surrealism.
(continues...)
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