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PETER FRANK A NEO-MODERNIST MANIFESTOAlthough they are widely scattered, in age, location, origin, and specific style, there

exists a growing corps of artists who believe that the practice of art in a post-Modernist context can extend beyond the indulgence or aggrandizement of the artistic persona (as in neoExpressionism) and beyond the simple critique of social and aesthetic convention (as in the by now conventional "neo Geo"). These artists do not simply modify the stylistic earmarks of Modernism to their own production; they return to the Modernists' underlying premises and to the coherent models advanced by Modernist practice, adopting the utopian idealism of Modernism to current atopian realities. These latter day neo-Modernists turn to historical Modernism because they see embodied in the Modernist ethos the assertion, if n not of human perfectability, than of human improvability. Today's neo-Modernist artists, in great part unaware as yet of one another's investigations and achievements, coincidentally argue for the value of art as a self sustaining and paradigmatic practice. They do not deny that art in contemporary late capitalist society readily becomes commodified, and thus spiritually denatured. But they do deny that this process is either inevitable or universal. Some art, they aver, r retains its power of moral and intellectual example.A certain rationalism marks much of the work that might be identified as neo-Modernist; Cubism, Constructivism, and other Modernist tendencies which emphasize formal rationality seem to be the models which neo-Modernist artists most favor. But a strong element of romanticism -- whether spiritual, social, or simply diffuse, but still powerfully felt -- also inflects neo-Modernist art. Just as our historical view of Modernism is being revised, away from the normative emphasis on optical effect and towards an appreciation of the extra-pictorial content in Modernist art, neoModernists concern themselves with scientific, political, and metaphysical matters. We can easily appreciate those artists who express these concerns overtly; but many more neo-Modernists enformalize non formal information, seeking not simply to broadcast, but to demonstrate, the supra-aesthetic p principles which compel them. For all serious artists, to paraphrase Bruce Nauman, art "reveals mystic truths." Neo-Modernists have inherited a legacy of great aesthetic, and personal, rigor exercised in the name of "mystic" -- not to mention revolutionary -- "truths." They thus subscribe quite consciously to the i idea of art as transcendent and exemplary.Neo-Modernism has been forged, unwittingly but not unwillingly, by artists working throughout the world -- the Western world above all, but even in non-Western societies. The neo-Modernist assertion, that art can serve as paradigm for a better -- more rationally grounded and more spiritually substantial -- life, is being made by artists of several generations, several races, several genders, and many artistic and geographic climates. They are responding to a general artistic and social atmosphere of economic aggressiveness and concomitant spiritual entropy. When there is more vigor in the art market than in the art being marketed, after all, it is time for a change. And the change comes best -- most naturally and most encouragingly -from artists themselves. Neo-Modernism -- reformulating the post Modernist viewpoint much the way neo-Impressionism (a/k/a "Pointillism") reformulated p post-Impressionist practiceLos Angeles July 1989 L

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