Despite the exhaustion of “whether painting is dead or alive”, doubt lingers; the question is as of yet unresolved, and even though painters persist, they are nevertheless prone to guilt or failure.  And assuming that there is still fertile ground in the American novel, or the execution of clichés, or the potency of a pop song, and assuming that there are countless individuals still musing about these and other tired topics: about whether or not they will find love and what it might look like, or what death is really about, whether universals exist after all or what it means to be a self-proclaimed artist or pop star or business man—these are questions that pertain to ready made ideas of what artist, death, painting and love might mean in a post-modern frame. In light of this dilemma, The Green Lantern is determined not to deliver something “new,” but rather individuals who are working out new steps through the quagmire of self-awareness.

There are times when we find ourselves wrestling; and for the past 50 years, since Pollock painted, since The Beatles coined rock and roll, since Joyce wrote Ulysses, Hegel completed Continental philosophy and Einstein revealed his theories on relativity—since then we have made technological developments and clever references or turns of phrase; and yet with the accomplishment of every individual contribution, one questions the basis of those endeavors, which either fail because they are too earnest, too ironic, or because the ability to create a worthy candidate for the canon is an insurmountable task.

This season is a kind of therapy: the post-modern shall take up the couch, recline, relax, and perhaps come out with some greater wisdom for development.