Len Feshkens:

>I don't think the common contemporary usage of "progress" implies
>an endpoint or destination as much as it implies improvement over time.

Right, but "improvement" is an axiological term, so it implies an ideal
model from which things can be far or near.  That's the arriving point
(needless to say that --despite the paradox-- ideal models are not
eternal).  For most artistic vanguards of the XX century, "progress" was
an index to measure how near was the world from that new art "quam olim
Abrahae promisisti et semini ejus".  Of course:  this historical promise
consisted of an art absolutely emancipated of the meanings and practices
of the bourgeois class...  which, among other things, invented the term
"progress".

Nowadays, art doesn't go anywhere. We can't talk about "improvement",
because a particular work doesn't represents a step towards any model.
This state of affairs is a sort of Paradise for some artists, and a sort
of Hell for others. (Swedenborg was right after all!!).

Pablo Massa
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