From cave paintings to Matthew Barney, well it would seem there's not much in the way of evolution, given the scribblings on the SFMOMA walls by him, but there certainly is a story based in time.

I study art history by addressing art past, present, and future.

If art has been around since before the Neolithic period, how do you figure that you'll be proved right in the future? If you were right wouldn't this have been just as easy to prove in the past? Why now and not before?

...are focused on the work at hand in a seeming poverty of random drippings. – Inspired by the work of J. Pollack

> "art is the economics of excess..."

Sperio,

As an artist, my life is anything but excessive. I work and I do art. My art costs me. If I listen closely to past works, like Picasso's Guernica, I know that there is a connection of art to injustice. Hence, I work for 5-6 years pro bono as a shop steward in a union shop; all the while I create posters and draft documents explaining that injustice through the vehicle of art, which is basically a synthesis of reality with a cathartic visual representation of the truth. If it does not represent the truth/beauty, it is not art. There is nothing excessive about the process. It is a lean, mean, fighting machine of metaphorical representation that is tied to human thought (Lakoff/perhaps Merleau-Ponty). In case you've not heard, all science, history, art, everything you or anyone knows is tied to the body, our minds and what we perceive of reality is nothing more than a projection of ourselves. Einstein's theory of relativity, for example began as a metaphor, which is then proven through human means. Our proofs or theories, evidentiary remarks, are extensions of our minds.

Similarly, a study of the techniques, as I am familiar with in learning about the development, processing and printing of black and white or even color photographs, I can then apply the science of photography to the study of what I have seen in deriving or making a contribution to the cumulative, clearly evolving, representation of that synthesis, known as the 'eloquence of the idea' (Stan Tomita).

Heidegger's (Ted Sadler) essence of truth as the 'unhiddenness of beings' and the 'correctness of propositions' is embodied in art. As a historical or on-going process, art by depicting truth follows, explains, and/or predicts human evolution. Studying art history provides for any number of expressive themes, whether psychological, sociological, scientific, literary, and the list goes on. By studying art in time, you learn about man in time. In art, there are imprints of the brain since, as Picasso said everything he painted was himself and beautifully we are. The Story of Art by Gombrich, Art in Theory 1900-1990 -- An Anthology of Changing Ideas, and many 'Art History' books or articles about art are often studies of the techniques and processes, and yes people care about Rodin's non-cast sculpture and we know about patrons and the role they play (well so far no role in my life, except as the byproduct of visual or literary evidence, acquisitions by a museum, and an education by professors in the ‘systems’ of art, but as an artist, until I am able to synthesize reality and manifest the eloquence of the idea not just once or twice, but as often as I pay attention. That "excess" you speak of is just that; it is a byproduct, cream on the meaty pie that many artists never get to suck on.