At this point in my life I feel a great deal of skepticism. I don’t quite know where to pinpoint its origin other than a broad cultural post-modern conditioning. Recently I was reading some of Kosuth’s notes on art and philosophy and noticed that he makes a lot of absolute statements on what art is and what art isn’t. This led to a realization of the frequency in which the major players in the art world from the first 80ish years of the 20th century (Reinhardt, Greenberg, and Motherwell to name a few) tend to make huge “Truth” statements about the nature of art. Maybe there was some sort of unspoken rule that if you want to be a member of the modern art canonical elite you HAD to put in your two-cents on exactly what constitutes art. Again, I’m not sure if it is because of post-modernity creeping into culture and into my psyche, but when individuals make sweeping, holistic statements to be taken as ultimate truth I immediately question its authenticity. On the contrary, there appears to be a sharp decline in the last few decades of bold ultimatums by artists and critics; I assume this is because of the fractured/diversified nature of contemporary art making. Due to this distrust of absolute truths, I sense a strong displacement between my generation and the artists of the last century. I suppose this is what it is like to exist during a paradigm shift….