On October 6th, 2003, The Foundation for the Advancement of Art presented Innovation, Substance, Vision–The Future of Art at The Pierre Hotel in New York City. With a panel of philosophers, artists, and scientists, the conference addressed the importance and future of art.
The international audience included major figures from the worlds of art and commerce including Stephen Farthing from the New York Academy of Art, Jennifer Thompson from MASS MoCA, and Lee Minaidis from the Organization of the World Heritage Cities.
Also in the audience were Louis Torres, co-author of What Art Is, Marsha Enright, founder of the College of the United States, and Lindsay Perigo, the founding member of New Zealand’s Libertarianz party.
List of Lectures and Speakers:
Michael Newberry addresses the international audience at New York’s Pierre Hotel.
Innovation in Art by Michael Newberry, artist and Director of the Foundation.
Michael Newberry: Director of the Foundation, a leading critic and an artist who expresses the human ideal through unique light and color schemes.
“Innovation is the key to positive change. Innovation is the bridge between an artists’ knowledge of earlier discoveries and the zenith of their imaginations.”
Stephen Hicks From Modern to Postmodern Art by Dr. Stephen Hicks, philosopher.
Dr. Stephen Hicks: Leading philosopher with wide-ranging insights from Postmodernism and Intellectual History. Dr. Hicks outlined the spiraling descent of postmodern art and argued that we must “look at the world afresh.”
“By the turn of the twentieth century, the nineteenth-century intellectual world’s sense of disquiet had become a full-blown anxiety. The artists responded, exploring in their works the implications of a world in which reason, order, certainty, dignity, beauty, and optimism seemed to have disappeared.”
“The world of postmodern art is a run-down hall of mirrors reflecting tiredly some innovations introduced a century ago. It is time to move on.”
Jan Koenderink Science and Art in the 21st Century by Dr. Jan Koenderink, vision scientist.
Dr. Jan Koenderink: One of the most influential scholars working in the field of human vision. Dr. Koenderink voiced his challenge to the future for integrating art and science and the importance of examining human perception:
“Since World War I science and art, indeed society as a whole, have gone through dramatic metamorphoses, leading to a loosening of bonds with the past and a loss of identity.”
“Popular science “purports to deal with cosmology, the subatomic realm, quantum theory, brain scanning… [these] topics are so remote as to be effectively irrelevant to any phenomena of daily life. A sane person would conclude that the sciences have nothing to say on what is important in a person’s life. If the art of our times reflects [this]…then it should be fully remote from your daily life’s visions. A blank canvas, a random pattern, or a nonsensical representation, would be totally appropriate…Such a perspective is manifestly wrong.”
“In contrast to the above there are the novel sciences which take a “holistic and non-nominalistic approach”, and “focus[es] on the phenomena at the human level. One consequence of this is a renewed interest in visualization and in artistic production, primarily towards representational art.”
Martine Vaugel Survivor, Worshiper, Fool by Martine Vaugel, sculptor.
Martine Vaugel: “Passionist” sculptor who has pushed the boundaries of expression in figurative sculpture for decades through her innovative methodologies.
“I believe in leaving my work for future generations to understand what it was to be a woman born in 1950, a woman of the twentieth century. And, that is what I will leave to the future, and that is whom I work for.”
“It is the truth of the art of the past added to our personal innovation and perspective that creates the art of the future.”
David Kelley Art and Ideals by Dr. David Kelley, philosopher.
Dr. David Kelley: Writer and intellectual on philosophical issues from human perception and reason to the furthest applications of ethics and politics.
“…the enormous hunger for the experience of ideals has had to be satisfied with popular film, music, and fiction, with their simple and often sentimental templates of courage in battle and love everlasting…Our ideals need and deserve the skill of fine artists. We need the excitement of artistic innovation, the experience of ideals rendered powerfully and insightfully.”
”Cynics may scoff at those who speak of ideals, but I think it is the cynic who is naïve…Life is a constant pursuit of goals, a constant striving for what we conceive as good for us…any such judgment implies a standard of comparison, a benchmark representing the best that is possible.”
“I am not saying that the representation of ideals is the only function of art. But I believe it is a vital function—and one that has been neglected in the past century.”
The speakers fielding questions during the Question and Answer session.
