Question

The author states that "painting is able, like no other medium, to ask other media the provocative question as to whether they mean something, whether they have something to comunicate or inform."
To what extent does this hold true, and as technology continues to advance, will painting be further capable of playing the role of arbiter in the art realm or will it begin to fade into antiquity?

Painting has seen its share of appreciation and a theoretical depreciation, yet it still remains today a respected medium to which there is certainly still a market for. Whether or not it is the standard by which other mediums even new ones can be judged against
is still true where the further we delve into the future, it seems as though the more we still yearn to hold on to the past as if in a rebellion to what is current and common. Painting certainly stands alone, yet
it is not necessarily just a comparitive tool. It may be possible to create provocative art that stands on its own and does not have to be compared to painting. However, it is in our nature to compare and to contrast,
and if it is unavoidable to look at relatinoships between art across time and mediums, painting is an accepted standrard to which other art can be put up against.




Is it possible that the avant garde or what is considered avant garde is apparently no longer available in that the advancement of technology controls the methods and techniques used by artists and thus negates the idea
of invention through art itself?

While technology rapidly advances and artists are somewhat attached to the trajectory of emergent digital mediums, I think the avant garde exists in the way that technology in itself is a tool while not the same as a paintbrush,
the newly formed mediums challenge present artists to use them in a creative provocative way. The idea of being avant garde is to interpret existing mediums or even new mediums in an artistic way, and while the qucik turnover of
different techniques and methods may suggest that the avant garde doesn't stay avant garde for long, it does offer the opportunity to create and invent at a perhaps more rapid pace than before. The avant garde certainly still exists
and is attainable, but the permenance may not be as our culture itself has shifted to a hyperactive pace.