Moreover, the things that a painting must be are given in an even more vague manner. I always become perplexed at this line of thinking especially when I have the gall to look backwards at artists who worked during the forgotten prehistory of painting that existed previous to 1900. I suppose that I should accept that these cavemen and their simple backward thinking should be cast out, but there is something charming about their unpolished feeble attempts at painting.
Take Michelangelo Buonarotti for example. Certainly he could never hold a candle to the supremacy of technical skill and the overwhelming truth of philosophy one finds in a Mark Rothko painting:
How could he? The Renaissance was a sad time of cultural vapidity, not like today. We have TMZ MTV NBC and countless other anagrams that epitomize cultural maturity.
So we should abandon the past with the same vigor as we always have. Accept the reality that non-representational art, or at the very least art that does not concern itself with content, is the only art that is valid. We should strive to attain a purely aesthetic reaction without all of the nonsensical additions of human emotion, history, narrative, mythology, symbolism. These were the expressions of a bygone age. We needn't concern ourselves with feelings or ideas... just pretty patterns laying on a flat support. And since this is such a brave new world, we should also create a new name for our pursuits. "Painting" doesn't seem distant enough from barbarians like Michelangelo and his uninformed ilk. I suggest that we call it: Wallpaper.
