Communicative Collage

Grant Kester's intention in this book doesn't seem to just be to define and place community and communicative art into a discourse, but also to place it within Modernist and Postmodernist art traditions. It almost seems to me as though he feels this will give it an artistic relevance of sorts. 'Oh, of course this bizarre new and different practice is art, they're simply doing what Hannah Hoch was doing decades ago- but without objects/images.'

I don't think that validating this sort of art by comparing, or concocting, similarities with Modernist art practice is going to help anybody.

Yes this area of art is (was) new and messy, but trying to explain it away in this kind of way takes away from what the practice more than it explains it or makes it easier for people to swallow as 'art', which is what I think Kester was trying to do.

People are going to struggle with accepting this as art no matter what you say about it.