I have a lot of admiration for the French philosopher Yves Michaud. I consider him a visionary. […] Of The crisis of contemporary art published in 1997 until Iart is over in 2021, Michaud presented himself as a keen observer and an uncompromising analyst of the evolution of art in recent decades. The three unique values of art today are, we read in his latest book, financial value (how much it’s worth), event value (how many people it brings in) and moral value (how much it’s worth). is uplifting).
His description of the moral art is worth quoting. Verbatim : “A new “commitment”, moralizing, worthy of the most sacred Sulpician bondieuserie, restores content to Art. […] For a good twenty years, this moralizing moralism has occupied almost the entire terrain of exhibitions, biennials, themed meetings, festivals, research projects and exotic residencies. This new commitment is accompanied by denunciations towards authors, producers, performers and even spectators of “what is immoral”. […] The works, on the other hand, like all bondieuseries, are quite banal. What does it matter! The caption makes sense. You might as well drop the artistic thing altogether. The moralizing artist then becomes an archivist, documentalist, historian, ethnologist, sociologist of struggles. He is no longer an artist but a scholar! »
We could not dream of a more accurate characterization of the photographic fresco Black Canadians (after Cooke), by Deanna Bowen, which the National Gallery of Canada has just inaugurated. Is the Museum preparing to bring moralizing art into the history of art? After all, socialist realism is already part of it.
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