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Slovak version
On October 30th 2020, the Dutch newspaper nrc. published a lengthy and explicit report about how 20 people came forward to tell their stories of rape, sexual assault, abuse, stalking, intimidation, and theft. One name connects them all - Juliaan A.

A name very well known to the contemporary Dutch art world spread immediately over social media, newspapers and social circles - and this time not as a praise or glorification of the man. This day is considered as the start of the #metoo movement in Dutch arts and culture.

Juliaan A. has been a stable name in the Dutch art world since his studies at Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, from which he graduated in 2012. In 2015, he was accepted to Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, by many seen as the highest point of art education one can reach in the Netherlands. In 2018, he was nominated for the Royal Prize for Painting, sealing his growing fame with a photo in which he smiles and shakes hands with Willem-Alexander, King of The Netherlands.

To put his success into perspective, in 2015 he received 50,000 euros in art funding from the Mondriaan Fund, and in 2017 around 38,000 euros on a talent scholarship. Additionally, De Nederlandsche Bank, ABN Amro, the Leiden University Medical Centre, de Bonnefantenmuseum as well as multiple private collectors have purchased and own his works.

His CV and his ever-growing portfolio show a successful young man who worked hard to achieve what he wanted, recognition, respect and adoration.

"The Harvey Weinstein of the art world"

As described by one of the survivors who spoke to nrc., Juliaan A. appears as a romantic "bad boy". Alternative, deeply into music and literature, and with great knowledge in both, always surrounded by people who either looked up to him for his work or his lifestyle. Heavy metal music, tattoos, band t-shirts, boots. One might think that the era of an intellectual, yet rebellious and problematic man in the arts is over, but this story proves us wrong. Romanticising "bad boys", putting them on a pedestal and downplaying their "bad" actions towards others is nothing new. In arts, music or culture especially.

The article manages to perfectly (yet horrifyingly) describe Juliaan's A. persona, his achievements and lifestyle, while contextualising the abuse and explicit accusations put forth by his accusers. Lucette ter Borg and Carola Houtekamer, who put together the shocking text, have taken on the task of investigating past years of Juliaan's A. personal and public life as well as the people involved and affected by it. They managed to recover and collect stories from as far back as 2008, talking to more than 80 people affected by him, and suggesting how Julian's A. behaviour was something of a public secret for more than a decade. Despite the fact that multiple victims spoke publicly about their accusations, including accounts where the police was involved, galleries and institutions did little if nothing until the article was published.

Several victims have gathered the courage to speak up, possibly putting not only their lives but also their own art careers in danger, yet little to none has been done. Galleries and institutions, or even individual artists involved with Juliaan A. would either joke about it, or completely diminish anyone's attempt to call him out. It is known that his alma mater, KABK, has been privately aware of this behaviour during his study years, varying from allegations of several victims to situations of Juliaan A. damaging or stealing other students' work. At that time he got suspended for just two weeks.

Juliaan A. himself, as well as people close to him have never publicly responded to the nrc. article. He has since been "cancelled" in the art world and not many have heard of him. A gallery that used to represent him, and who's director's response when firstly asked about this case was "What an artist does in his spare time is up to him.", has since suspended their collaboration. Juliaan A. is currently under investigation after at least 5 people have filed a complaint to judicial authorities. Despite a few attempts to un-cancel him, creating a massive backlash, currently nobody really knows of his whereabouts or plans for the future.

Art world (not) united

One would think that the triggering content nrc. journalists have collected and published immediately brings society into a common understanding and condemnation of such crimes and the abuser himself. After the initial shock highly expressed over social media, the art world and its members split into two groups - one standing together with survivors, condemning situations mentioned in nrc. and potentially confirming or adding their own stories that they did not dare to share before. The other group would defend the artist, either by protecting themselves as "not knowing about his doings", or knowing about it and attempting to separate his personal life from his work.

The published article has not only opened up the discussion of abuse and power in the art world, but also created a safer and open space for more people to come forward and talk about their experiences in art education or later as art professionals. An Instagram account @calloutdutchartinsitutions was created, and in the span of a few weeks has collected and anonymously published stories from students as well as alumni of all art academies in The Netherlands. Names were named and every morning people involved in the Dutch art world would wake up expecting new posts to come. As a reaction, two major art academies, and the two that have been mentioned on the Instagram account the most, have published their apologies and promised to create a safer space for all. Some have terminated their contracts with the teachers and mentors, who allegedly used their power to abuse, bully or discriminate against their students based on gender, race, or ethnicity. Some have attempted to create either online platforms or in-house spaces to come to in case of such a situation happening on their grounds. As reactive as it may sound, this serves as a temporary band-aid for on-going systemic problems. Cutting connections and terminating work contracts may stop called-out abusers from causing even more violence and trauma, however, it does not automatically create a safer environment. The urgency is on finding and limiting the reasons which feed and allow the existence of such abuse in the first place.

Eventually, the Instagram account @calloutdutchartinstituitions, after facing several private threats and an investigation from the police on hate speech and spreading misinformation, had to be deleted.

Separating the artist (human) from their art (work)

One of the major arguments against "cancelling" Juliaan A., or the others recently accused and called out for their wrong-doings, is mentioning lengthy lists of their achievements and contributions to this society. Across the spectrum of arts and culture, no less in the political world, defenders of abusers restlessly point out their cultural market value. As if "It's possible to separate the artist from their art". The individual may be violent and dangerous, but their work doesn't harm anyone. This was the sentiment of a gallerist representing Juliaan A. who later admitted knowledge of the allegations at the time. He chose to ignore the allegations for his own benefit - whether it's his business or reputation, and he chose to diminish victims' traumas for his or Juliaan's A. career growth. As if someone's personal trauma is of less value than someone else' (their abuser's) work. And as if only once we collect enough evidence - thus enough people who experienced abuse or violence from this person - we can start to condemn his actions. The limit seems like a fluid line in this situation, and the art world has evidently benefited from moving it back and forth.

But was not Juliaan's A. work made possible under the opportunities and circumstances given to its maker? Did not his career flourish thanks to the lack of meaningful scrutiny by the art world and its support mechanisms? Did not this work grow in value and recognition thanks to the institutions dismissing the allegations and allowing the artist's presence in the art world? Did not the institutions and art spaces presenting Juliaan's A. work swipe people's personal experience with the abuser under the carpet for protecting their own liability, reputations, and earnings?

The line may seem thin - and given the scenario of innocent until proven guilty - one might think that completely removing their work from the public eye is a drastic gesture. On the other hand, knowing that most abusers will never be proven guilty or even accused, allows potentially dangerous people to continue producing art and acting unimpeded in their success. This allows the perpetrators to become even more public, enabling them a larger space to present their voice - and themselves. Bad advertisement is still an advertisement and in this case means that despite their wrong-doing, their fame and recognition may grow in power and size. On the other hand, victims rarely have the chance to apply "guilty until proven innocent" on their abusers and statistically most of them never find their justice.

One thing is to speak of a person who has harmed others and take the necessary measures to disable them from continuing to do so. Another is the question of how someone so known and public could get away with years of abuse and violence, that's been made public while still growing their fame and recognition as if it's virtually a positive part of their persona?

Power structures are entangled in every system, and knowingly in arts too. Public image plays a humongous role and facing backslash or criticism may harm it. At the same time, the art world presents itself as open-minded and ever evolving. Perhaps in some recent cases taking on topics and statements for the sake of remaining "on top of it". We all recognize certain institutions shifting their focus more on (re)presenting values such as feminism, rights for queer and non-binary people or #BlackLivesMatter, and sometimes presenting those solely for their marketing purposes. Performative activism does not help anyone, nor does ignoring serious allegations against someone public.

Action - reaction

The idea of being "cancelled" certainly creates a lot of fear especially for people in public view. If being famous (or popular, or well-known in their field) is a main part (or a consequence) of their job, and mostly serves to provide income, one surely fears losing it. At the same time, publicness should come with a certain responsibility.

Being responsible for your own actions or words should come as a base. Being held accountable for your actions should come right after. And lastly, the institutions and people involved taking action after harm has been done and re-evaluating the conditions and reasons under such situations took place. Demanding greater accountability from public figures does not seem as such a difficult task if we wish to live in a safer society. Unfortunately, every world has their own Juliaan A., and his story proves that abuse of power is not necessarily an individual affair.

Looking at the long and now untangled web of victims' stories, as well as Juliaan's A. career and his private life, we need to focus on the core of the problem. Uncovering the wrong-doer's actions can easily be concluded by calling that person "mentally ill" or "crazy". Separating the abuser from the rest of us. And while in many cases convicted abusers are psychologically tested and eventually diagnosed, as a society we must look at the bigger picture.

If it's possible for someone like Juliaan A. to get away with years of abuse and violence, while his career flourishes, we must look at the wider circles around him, rather than just keeping our focus solely on the abusive individual. In no circumstances could one get away with so much harm, if others around him would not ignore, diminish or belittle his actions. And while it is hard to keep an eye on every single person involved, uncovering the support of abusers by bigger institutions such as galleries, museums or art schools, and calling them out, should now come as a norm.

At the moment, the weight of fighting for justice still falls on the victims' shoulders, who courageously re-tell their experiences with abuse, and take on the emotional labour of reliving their trauma. Given the fact that in Juliaan's A. case nobody truly acted on these stories for years, and actually supported his career growth, whether to protect their own business or their reputation, one can only imagine that many victims don't come to tell their stories at all. This only shows the urgency for institutions to be prepared for such scenarios in advance, rather than just trying to come out clean once the news breaks. We should know by now that (sexual) violence and abuse used as a tool in any power structures does not come as a surprise.

Secondly, we all shall find the courage to take a strong stand in situations like these. If the victim, or someone close to them, is questioning whether to come forward and possibly harm their own career, education, or their social relations, we have failed to create a safe society. If the institution, whether educational, a museum or a gallery, is depending financially, culturally or socially on the works of the abusive and violent makers, and weighing whether the general moral beliefs are below or above their business and marketing agendas, we have failed equally.

Culture of consequences

This story could easily be applied to any other current art world, and sadly on the other spheres too. Take out Juliaan's A. name from this text and apply any other name that has circulated in the media or your social circles recently. If the fear of someone being "cancelled" overshadows the actual reasons for their cancellation, and this person eventually gets more space to un-cancel themselves than the actual space their victims get, we have yet to learn a lot.

If as a society we manage to shift from our fear of being cancelled, to taking on the responsibility to deal with the consequences of our actions, we may have a chance. Perhaps for starters - if your fear of being cancelled is stronger than your belief that society should be safe for everyone in the first place - rethink your values again. Consequence culture may be just a re-named cancel culture, but it surely gives us a chance to evolve from the culture of fear to a place where we actively work together to disable abuse and violence in workplaces and our private lives. In this case, where the cancel culture may operate just as a peak moment to call out and stop certain individuals from their wrong-doings, and the possibility for abusers to frame themselves as "the victims of cancel culture", consequence culture opens up a space for a discussion and a constant check-in of our position towards achieving a safer society as well as giving the space for victims' stories. Institutions should be able to work out a moral code that would serve as a norm, as clearly we are unable to operate from a general understanding that violence and abuse should not happen. And once individuals aware of the consequences start checking who they get involved with, whether for work or private relations, we can slowly build a safe space, not only in the art world, but for us all.
The author is a visual artist, a volunteer for Neighborhood Feminists and is based in Amsterdam.

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Cancelling the art world - the culture of consequences

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Slovak version On October 30th 2020, the Dutch newspaper nrc. published a lengthy and explicit report about how 20 people came forward to tell their stories of rape, sexual assault, abuse, stalking, intimidation, and theft. One name connects them all - Juliaan A.

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From pigments in paints to installations in galleries, animals have long been used in art. Many take the stance that artists must be allowed their creative expression. But why is an artist's whim more important than an animal's life?

It was announced in July that, after successful opposition from PETA and Wolfsburg's veterinary office, Damien Hirst's artwork "A Hundred Years" would be removed from the Kunstmuseum, Germany.

The piece, a large glass vitrine divided into two sections, saw maggots hatch into flies in the first compartment. In the second, they were attracted to the UV light of an electrocuting device, where they were zapped to death.

The gallery's director, Andreas Beitin, argued that the work was supposed to highlight how insects die constantly from artificial lighting at night, the work of humans. And yet Hirst did this by continuing to kill endless insects. This is not art, nor clever artistic expression. This is another entrance to the list of animal abuses Hirst's artistic career has facilitated.

Damian Hirst's use of animals

Hirst first entered the public consciousness in 1988, when he was included in the exhibition "Freeze." It was in 1990 when his piece "One Thousand Years" shot him into artistic revelry.

This piece was perhaps the maggot to Hirst's fly - the original stimulus that would later inspire "A Hundred Years." In the 1990 installation, a glass cabinet contained the decomposing skull of a dead cow. Breeding maggots would feast on the animal's carcass before evolving into flies and getting fried by another killing device.

Art critics like to think this portrays the perfunctory routine of life, death, and decay. Not stopping to consider if it is ethical to condemn creatures to death simply to satisfy this creative expression. Indeed, according to Artnet, Hirst has killed close to one million creatures throughout his career. Mainly insects. He was criticized for having sentenced 9,000 butterflies to death in his exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2012.

Hirst is probably most famous for his installations of dead animals (such as calves, sheep, baby horses, a bear, and a zebra) preserved in looming formaldehyde tanks.

Speaking about his Natural History series, Hirst said that he "just wanted to do a zoo that worked... because I hate the zoo, and I just thought it would be great to do a zoo of dead animals, instead of having living animals pacing about in misery... I never thought of [the works] as violent. I always thought of them as sad."

This statement is dripping in hypocrisy.

If Hirst despised zoos so much because they impinge upon an animal's freedom, why pluck - for instance - the famous tiger shark out of their home in the ocean - and use them for artwork which eventually made him $5.7 million?

You cannot be on the side of animal freedom, and then kill animals for your own benefit. Using animals in such a way, and hanging them from exhibitions as lifeless canvases, serves to only perpetuate the idea that animals are commodities, disposable, and expendable. Here only as tools for humans.

Artists using animals in their work is widespread

Sadly, Hirst is not alone.

There are countless artists who have condemned animals to death or to lives of misery. Guillermo Vargas received international criticism in 2008 when he shackled a starving dog beneath (out of reach) words made from dog food. These were "Eres Lo Que Lees" (You Are What You Read).

The gallery director claimed that the dog was untied and fed during non-exhibition hours. But why subject a sentient being to such cruelty in the first place? Even more horrifically, artist Tom Otterness adopted a dog from a rescue shelter in 1977, before tying them to a fence and shooting them to death for an exhibition. There aren't adequate words for this brutality.

Animals used for ingredients

Before it was discovered that pigments could be made synthetically, animals were exploited to create certain colors for paints and dyes. Indian Yellow, for instance, was made using cow urine. The cows were only fed mango leaves to enrich the yellow color. This led to the cows being severely malnourished, and most experienced issues such as jaundice or kidney stones.

The pigment was banned in 1908. Tyrian purple, the color of nobility and royalty, was made from the glands of snails. Cochineal and Carmine were made red from beetle blood. The list goes on.

Nowadays, art materials are much more animal-friendly. Even most glues now opt for synthetic products, rather than the earlier use of animal collagen.

However, the use of animals in artwork has not yet been banished to the past. Whilst exhibitions exploiting animals often receive outrage and protests from activists, American law is often not adequately equipped to protect animals from harm. American courts have previously defended the first amendment right of free expression over the rights of a sentient animal.

Is artistic expression really more important than an animal's life?

This is where the core of the issue lies. The very fact that artistic expression may be viewed as more important than protecting an animal from abuse highlights how animals are still recognized as morally inconsequential.

But animals have been accepted - last year by the UK government - to be sentient beings that experience pain, joy, and fear. They may not be able to solve a math problem or vote in an election, but they are similar to us in all the ways that matter.

To excuse an animal's mistreatment in the name of art is wholly unethical. Animals are not art supplies to be used at whim, they are conscious creatures worthy of moral treatment.

If a bystander is horrified at the use of an animal in artwork - say, Tom Otterness shooting a dog - could they not extend this compassion to the slaughter of billions of animals each year for food? Cows hung upside down, throats slit, and bled to death? Pigs gassed to death in toxic chambers?

Animals are not paintbrushes to express human issues. And neither are they cling-filmed meat in the fridge aisle. They are living, breathing, conscious beings who deserve to live lives free from human exploitation.

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Creativity Or Abuse? Inside The Art World's Complicated Relationship With Animals

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From pigments in paints to installations in galleries, animals have long been used in art. Many take the stance that artists must be allowed their creative expression. But why is an artist's whim more important than an animal's life?

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Award-winning artist Richard Mosse's major new work premieres at 180 Studios.

Taking you deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the immersive video installation is the result of three years filming in the world's largest rainforest. Seeking to overcome the inherent challenges of representing climate change, this is Mosse's most ambitious project to date.

A selection of the artist's photographs from the project will be displayed alongside the installation, including large-scale photographs that have not been exhibited in the UK before.

Dates
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12 October 2022 - 18 December 2022

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Award-winning artist Richard Mosse's major new work premieres at 180 Studios. Taking you deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the immersive video installation is the result of three years filming in the world's largest rainforest. Seeking to overcome the inherent challenges of representing climate change, this is Mosse's most ambitious project to date.

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The Art World’s Environmental Issues: Helping or Hurting the Cause?

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The art world can be a wasteful and excessive place, contributing to the
ever-growing climate change crisis. Artists travel constantly to artist
residencies, gallerists and collectors jet-set to art fairs multiple times a
month, and creative productions generate a lot of excess material and waste that
becomes a part of

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- Equality
- Materials used/waste in art
- All sorts of popular art materials such as resin, acrylics, ink etc and their environmental impact
- Off cuts of materials
- Can we use whatever material that's available just because it's for "art"?
- Do we/artists/creatives have the rights to be "wasteful"?
- Can we "recycle" artwork?
- The rise of NFT & its environmental impact (NFT art's environmental concerns)
- Artists questioning artists, mega artists
- Misinformation/disinformation
- Interview artists: Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Amartey Golding, Bruce McLean
- Manifesto, framework for good practices?

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We are living in the age of waste. Is design the answer to leaving our throwaway culture behind?

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If it wasn't a non-artistic act, how could it have received so much attention and praise?

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British artist Damien Hirst is among the many art-world giants who have set fire to their work, having burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday. He streamed the event on Instagram and is set to burn thousands more works of art.

It's part of his project "The Currency." It consists of a collection of 10,000 NFTs. Each non-fungible token corresponds to a physical painting featuring his signature multicolored dots, made from enamel paint on handmade paper. The pieces were initially available for $2,000, which is affordable compared with what Hirst's work has been known to go for.

"A lot of people think I'm burning millions of dollars of art but I'm not, I'm completing the transformation of these physical artworks into nfts by burning the physical versions," Hirst wrote in an Instagram caption. "the value of art digital or physical which is hard to define at the best of times will not be lost it will be transferred to the nft as soon as they are burnt."

A year after buying a piece from "The Currency," collectors had to make a choice. They could either take the painting, meaning they would lose the NFT, or hold onto the NFT, meaning the painting would be burned.

"'The Currency' pitted Hirst's foray into the new world of digital art against his old-school practice, asking the art market to decide which was more valuable," wrote Artnet News' Caroline Goldstein.

The buyers were almost evenly split in their decisions, with 5,149 opting to trade their NFT for the original painting and 4,851 choosing the NFT. The pieces are being shown at the Newport Street Gallery in London and will be burned during the art fair Frieze London, which runs from Oct. 12 through 16.

An NFT is a digital identifier that confirms the authenticity and ownership of a tangible or digital object. It acts as a sort of receipt, and its uniqueness makes it valuable.

In the contemporary art market, art is traded like an asset and seen as a financial instrument, filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn told NPR in 2018. NFTs are a new type of asset that can be commodified. The energy it takes to create them has also made them notoriously bad for the environment.

Many comments on Hirst's Instagram post about the burning were critical. "Either way it's all about the money," wrote one user. "Interesting strategy of maxing the carbon footprint for this collection," wrote another.

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Damien Hirst just burned 1,000 of his paintings and will soon burn thousands more

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British artist Damien Hirst is among the many art-world giants who have set fire to their work, having burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday. He streamed the event on Instagram and is set to burn thousands more works of art. It's part of his project "The Currency."

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It's not always easy to identify the prevailing trends in contemporary art: since the coexistence of Pop and Minimalism in the '60s and the subsequent advent of pluralism, art has tended to constitute a jostle of conflicting aesthetic and critical positions, the picture varying according to standpoint and taste. Of late, though, the landscape has seemed quite legible. If you've been visiting biennales or institutions and a fair swathe of forward-thinking commercial galleries, the art there is increasingly predicated on giving voice to the formerly underrepresented or trying to right former wrongs. Hence, to take a few recent examples, a Venice Biennale composed of 90 percent women artists, a Documenta full of collectives new to even seasoned Western art-watchers - and evidence, via the media shitstorm, of the pitfalls of decentralised curating - and museum shows that, when they do spotlight dead white males (Hogarth at Tate Britain, for example, or German 'colonial' modernists at Berlin's Neuenationalgalerie), seek to pre-emptively point out said artists' moral failings before the hanging jury of Twitter can do so. Also, and relatedly, living white male artists complaining, three beers in and off the record, that they'll never get another show.

And then there's the art market, which, though it now leans more towards women artists and artists of colour than it used to, still seems primarily enraptured by eye-pleasing painting in dialogue with familiar historical aesthetics - witness the popularity of, for example, Anna Weyant, Christina Quarles, Flora Yukhnovich - which points in turn to an audience less interested in being challenged than in easy pleasure, handholding, and maybe a quick profit. One can't wholly blame said buyers, given the hurry of the auction houses to bundle art with any kind of luxury item in a kind of marvellous economic relativism, plus a phalanx of gallerists not too keen on wasting time educating new collectors towards knottier fare. Back in the museums and biennials, the much-needed shift in terms of who gets exhibited - and who decides who gets exhibited - is unthinkable without the righteous frustration and mobilising of social justice movements during the last decade or so or the hair-trigger mood of social media. Given the spotlight, finally, under-recognised artists are naturally airing their grievances. Meanwhile, the 'haves' dependent on structural inequality in the first place are, as usual, shopping for baubles and using the biennials to network - the painterly Surrealism that was a signature of this year's Venice Biennale is looking like a smart investment.

Of course, this is a bit of a cartoon and there is art around, on show, that falls into neither of these camps - there are always exceptions, if you look - but the latter increasingly feels to fall outside of the larger, increasingly pronounced dualistic paradigm. If you complain, though, especially from a position of longstanding privilege, that amid all of this you're not seeing enough of the art you want to see (whatever that is), that moralistic gatekeepers are running scared or legislating for you, that you're now aesthetically stateless, then you're on sketchy ground. Jerry Saltz, on social media a few months back, opined that 'In our time when art about "good causes" is automatically called "good", it feels like the anxieties of the critical-academic-curatorial-mercantile class is [sic] imposing the definitions of these things on artists & limiting art to being "responsible" according to its rules', and I'm still pondering what I think about that. I see enough examples of, say, complexity - a core virtue of art, for me - not being sacrificed in socially conscious art, though it can be harder to see when the work is being instrumentalised by curators, framed as a consumable message. It is, at the very least, something to wrestle with, perhaps while looking a little harder for the art that you want to see, giving time to art that you think you don't, and checking in often enough on the stuff that's historically rung your cherries so that you remember why you got involved in the first place, which is healthy practice whatever else is going on.

What's certain, amid all this, is that contemporary art doesn't stand still. The last time vanguard art practice felt this urgently politicised and was given a substantial stage on which to perform was the early '90s - recall, for example, the controversial Whitney Biennial of 1993 - and identity politics was the focus until, somehow, it wasn't. Artists of my acquaintance who have been lofted in part by the recent rising moral tide are already wondering out loud if this is, again, just a 'moment', a trend, and the artworld - and the clout-chasers within it, once clout is secured - will soon have lost interest, moved on to something else. Maybe: some commercial spaces, at least, have started to return to showing old white dudes, which felt almost unthinkable a year ago. Or possibly, given that increasing disparity and extremism (of wealth distribution, of public opinion) seems to be the trend, we're set for a more pronounced version of the same: a contemporary art scene - or pair of scenes - set against a raging hellscape of contemporary reality, in which there's no justification for either subtlety or non-profitability, in which he, or she, not busy yelling is busy buying. In the meantime, the binary landscape offers one conspicuous virtue. In pointing combinedly to inequality, anger, blissful ignorance and gilded pleasure-seeking, and a residual degree of hope that conditions can yet be improved, it shows us precisely where we're at right now.

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It's not always easy to identify the prevailing trends in contemporary art: since the coexistence of Pop and Minimalism in the '60s and the subsequent advent of pluralism, art has tended to constitute a jostle of conflicting aesthetic and critical positions, the picture varying according to standpoint and taste.