So, ...

Having looked at Earth Art and Conceptual/New Realist art, and noticed their associated visual tendencies towards the abstraction or figuration that typically express particular kinds of agendas or issues, what can we say? It may be that during the last twenty years of the 20th century, our artists have begun to put us in a position to address the metacommentary.

1.

As we have seen, those artists who address reality as a universal entity whose nature remains constant regardless of our human ability to comprehend or connect with it - these artists tend to favour abstract styles. Their art is as inscrutable as that reality itself, and over the century it has grown in scale and scope so that now it can truly be said to envelop and contain those who seek it out.

Notice the serenity of these works. Their art, the thing in itself, requires nothing from us, although we may seek it out and exist alongside it (or in connection with it) if we wish.

2.

We have also seen that those artists who are concerned with their own personal psychology and relationship to society tend to favour figurative art. Their scale and scope has also expanded, as they use more and more pre-existing outside-world components to express the process and experience of their self-discovery and social identity, all of which seems to have been imposed on them from outside.

Notice the anxiety and protest inherent in many of these works. It is as if they found that neither their unique personality nor their unique identity originated within, but was arbitrarily imposed on them from outside - and they hate this! Their art is by turns irritable, angry, rebellious, confronted and confronting, obscene, childish, anxious and even dispairing. This art requires a response from us. As recipients of the protest, we are implicitly accused of causing or enabling the problem. We should be ashamed, we should do something, we should make it stop! Equally, though, it is our problem too, because we too have been formed, labelled, and expected to put up with the result, by entities outside ourselves: by our parents and by society. We are both the problem and its victim, and there seems no successful way forward.

Notice what happens to the mood of the conceptual artists as their art gets more abstract. Eva Hesse, for example, examines female consciousness in a manner neutralised by the inscrutable minimalism pioneered by the men. Martin Puryear examines the self in relation to its environment and products, and the fear of non-human power is partly mitigated. So they provide a recognizable half-way point between the two poles of consciousness representated by Earth and Conceptual art. If there is a metacomment in all this, what is that comment? Can people and reality connect? Is it necessary for them to connect? What is the effect of any connection? Is there a parallel between our attempts to comprehend reality and society's attempts to comprehend us?