Art and Obsolescence

I gave the first in a (short) series of lectures at College today, an attempt to make some sense of the media typically available in the contemporary art college.  A few “soundbites” seemed to resonate.  Here’s one:  in most situations, people are looking for the fastest, most effortless, most efficient way to construct something or tell other people something or convince them of something or whatever; But in the arts, it’s not the case.  People draw and paint and carve…even sing and dance.  They use really old media.  And there’s a reason for it.   I know I’m not the first to notice that so-called “obsolete” communications media go on to a shadowy afterlife in art schools–McLuhan said it clearly enough.  The French critic, Philippe Burty, made something of a career out of knowing which retired print process would start to exert some sort of  attraction on potential buyers of prints — at some decent interval after it was no longer commercially viable.  Think of “hot” type or wet-process photography.  Maybe an old process “speaks” either to a living memory, a past moment of joy or possibility, or some sort of “species” memory, a return to a sensual plenitude, before, say, the conceptual discipline of writing.