Will the Next Generation of Artists Please Stand Up ?

In recent years, scientists have discovered that frogs and toads are becoming extinct worldwide. For those of you who do not enjoy eating frogs legs, this may not seem like too big a problem. However, frogs and toads have been identified by scientist as an indicator species of the general health of the environment due to the fact that they are especially vulnerable and are usually the first to disappear. This extinction of the reptiles will cause a broken link in the food chain and eventually have catastrophic effects on other organisms.

Last year while I was participating in the Melbourne, Florida art show I noticed, while standing in line before the show to get my information packet, that most of the artists were over 50 years old. In fact they were almost all over 50 and about half were over 60 years old. I had been noticing this aging of the sidewalk artist group for many years as I always enjoy looking at the new artists work, new ideas are always refreshing.

I participated in my first art show in 1973 in Raleigh, North Carolina while I was a student at the design school at NCSU. Back then, most of the artists doing sidewalk shows were in their 20’s and 30’s. This group is still out there, but the next generation does not exist, at least on the street selling art.

Once again, for those of you who do not like to eat frogs legs, this may not seem like much of a problem. But just as the extinction of frogs and toads is an indicator of the general health of our ecosystem, the extinction of the sidewalk artists may very well be an indicator of the general health of America’s art culture, because there is a tremendous cultural exchange that goes on at sidewalk art shows besides the sale of art. It is America’s “museum without walls”. The street shows are where the artists are directly accessible to the public, where they create an interest and excitement about their art and also provide technical information to the general public.

This is not a sort of, maybe, kind of, observation concerning the total lack of replacement artists in our art culture, it is a dead on reality, I am witnessing the end of an era. Perhaps easel painting and sculpture is an anachronism and who needs sculptors, and painters anyway?

When the camera was first invented in 1850, it caused a revolution in art that continues to reverberate today. The visual artists were no longer required to do portraiture, there main bread and butter. The new technology of photography took care of providing the public with portraits and thereby freed the painters up to explore new subjects. The first big movement was impressionism which began to treat color as an entity in itself. Then came the post impressionists, cubists, fauvists, on and on the art culture continued to grow, one idea growing out of the one before it, the evolution of the visual art culture.

Now we have a new technology, a new medium, computer generated art, and we are witnessing the pioneer stage of this medium. However, in 250,000 years there has never been such a complete break in the link of the art culture as has been brought on by the computer. Perhaps the computer will provide everything the art culture needs in the future and I should go back to the old folks home and mind my own business.

The school is still out on the effectiveness of computer learning when it comes to developing cognitive skills and hand and eye coordination. In fact there is very little research going on concerning the quality of creative growth by learning to draw on a computer compared to the more direct method of pencil and paper. Also, cutting paper to make a collage uses a different part of the brain than drawing with a pencil on paper.

There is no need to examine the comparison of cognitive development while creating collage or sculpture with ones hands and computer generated three dimensional images as there is no physical hands on experience to compare. They are as different as apples and jet airplanes.

The largest part of our brain is hooked up to our hands. The scientists are just beginning to learn what artists have known for 250,000 years, that our hands think. The more we use our hands to create art, the more our minds freely associate and our hands begin to take on a life of their own.


So before I go back to eating my porridge at the retirement village, I must ask the question, will the next generation of artists please stand up ?