David Peat

112 From Certainty to UncertaintyYet this latter statement brings us to the heart of the postmoderndilemma. If there is no certainty anymore; if everyone is an artist and ifart is a multiplicity of activities, from painting to performance, fromtexts on a wall to a walk across a field, from decorating a telephone boxto living out other people’s fantasies on the Internet, does this meanthat everything has collapsed into a formless relativism? Are there nolonger any values, judgments, or standards in art?Of all the things around us, from crime in the streets or pollutionof our rivers, what most upsets the ordinary citizen is a row of bricksin an art gallery or an enormous canvas apparently painted in a singlecolor. “Because I could have done that just as well, how can thatbe art?” is the general reaction, and “if I did that no one would pay mea million dollars.” The result is that the contemporary art industrylooks like an elaborate con game set up by artists, dealers, and gallerycurators.To a certain extent this criticism is correct. There is a great deal ofconfidence trickery in the art market and, as any con artist will tell you,it is the greedy and acquisitive who are the most readily fooled. But thefact that some people collude does not mean that contemporary artitself lacks any value. Of course it has values. The issue for manylaypeople is, Who sets these values? In the past the public could look tothe salon, the national galleries, and the art experts to be told what wasgood and what was bad. But what use are art critics today? How areordinary people supposed to find their way through all that fog of convolutedjargon that is being written about art?Art today is particularly diverse. No single authority is willing totell the layperson “this is good art and that is bad art.” But this does notmean that all judgment is for naught. More and more the onus is beingput on the viewers, or participants, to respond to art, to make theirown judgments and break down the barrier between art and artists onthe one hand, and themselves on the other. The viewer–participantshave a right to question and to refuse to accept what is put before them.But to exercise this right they must at least be willing to meet the artistpart way and to assume some of the responsibility of what is beingshown, performed, or said.And so the postmodern dilemma has two sides and two faces. It is