Art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto argues that Western Art followed a stable trajectory from its earliest beginnings until the pop art movement of the 1960s. Specifically, he claims that Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes realized the “end of art” – a notion intrinsically and admittedly rooted in Hegel’s philosophy that everything is in a process of unfolding and realizing an ultimate goal. Up until Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, art could easily be distinguished from real things – it was paint on canvas; it was charcoal on paper; it was the representation of something real. However, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes were indistinguishable from real Brillo Boxes; their status as objects of art was dependent on a philosophical understanding of art rather than their physical qualities. At this point, art entered its “post-historical” period: anything can be deemed art, and anything could be deemed good art, provided it has an aesthetic, philosophical justification for its content.
What does this have to do with skateboarding? Well, although this is a subject of much debate among skaters (and most definitely among non-skaters), I’m going to go ahead and claim that skateboarding is an art form. As Jason Dill said, “above all… it’s art. It’s technique; it’s form. And it’s just what looks good” (Transworld Skateboarding’s Feedback). And like other art forms, skateboarding has followed a pretty stable path since its inception. It has changed and developed, but those changes have always built on what came before. Tricks became more technical; tricks were done on more difficult or dangerous obstacles. In the late 90s and early 2000s, this progression reached its peak by splitting skateboarding into two camps: you could be “hesh,” and skate 30 stair rails and two story drops, or you could be “tech,” and string together multi-trick sequences, including grinds with nearly mandatory flip-in, flip-out combinations. These two extremes pushed skateboarding to its historical limits – the spectacle of hesh skating and the skill of tech skating worked together to realize pretty near everything that could be done on a board. And a magical thing happened in the wake of all of this: people started to recognize, as Jason Dill had already claimed at the height of this era of “achievement-based” skateboarding, that it didn’t matter so much what you did on a skateboard as how you did it. This mentality has influenced the development of what I refer to as “post-historical skateboarding.” Like in art’s post-historical period, anything can now be deemed good skating, provided it has an aesthetic, philosophical justification behind it.
Another part of Hegel’s philosophy is that there are “world-historical individuals” – people with the foresight and creativity to help history realize its goal by coming up with new ideas, innovations, or inventions. These people have a great influence on the development of history and the universe through their intellectual contributions to our collective spirit. Skateboarding, too, has always had these figures; people like Mark Gonzales, Jason Dill, and Leo Valls have been able to push boundaries by taking what has come before and recontextualizing it and incorporating it with contemporary skateboarding.
Most professional skaters (and many non-pros, too) will claim that the Gonz’s part from Blind’s Video Days is among their favourite skate parts, and it’s not because he does X number of kickflips or ollies X number of stairs. It’s the way he skates – the way he interacts with his environment. The footage of him cruising the streets is every bit as awe-inspiring as the footage of him boardslide front-shoving a horizontally double-kinked rail or indy grabbing over the Wallenberg Big Four. And this was in 1991! The part even includes a line in which Gonzales does a backside 180 to fakie manual, pivots back and puts his wheels down before riding off the curb. By today’s standards, that’s not even a make. And yet, it just doesn’t matter; the flow is perfect, and the skating is so good that it’s completely acceptable that he didn’t manual the full pad. Gonzales’ Video Days part was a very early precursor to the post-historical skateboarding that is just now becoming more widespread.
Mark Gonzales - Video Days
Likewise, Jason Dill’s game-changing moment in Alien Workshop’s Photosynthesis was well ahead of its time. It forced skaters to completely re-examine what is acceptable practice when filming a line: after tre-flipping on flat and fakie front shoving over a barrier, Dill ollies up a curb, hops off his board and actually walks down a set of stairs before hopping back on his board to ollie another stair gap. Up until this point, stepping off your board meant the end of a line. If you couldn’t stay on your board, it wasn’t a continuous sequence, and therefore didn’t count as a line. But Dill’s jaunt down the stairs to a different gap signaled another shift in skateboarding: it was becoming looser, more inclusive. Dill would continue to push boundaries in popular skateboarding with his future video parts: in Habitat’s Mosaic, his entire part was made up of lines, focusing on flow and eschewing the spectacle of single-trick skating; in Alien Workshop’s Mind Field, he worked hard to integrate older, simpler tricks like slappy grinds and wallies with newer manual combinations and tricks done on interesting and challenging terrain.
Jason Dill - Photosynthesis
There is perhaps no skater right now that better represents the idea of post-historical skating than Leo Valls. His ability to access tricks, trends and aesthetics from both past and present in order to forge a style that is completely unique and contemporary is unparalleled. His opening line in Yoan Taillandier’s Minuit sets the tone for his entire part: right alongside a speedy and stylish backside nollie and switch 180, Valls throws a one-footed powerslide between the wheels and under the doors of a parked car. He finishes the line off with a properly popped and flicked nollie flip. The powerslide is innovative and fresh, despite that fact that it’s more closely related to the styles and aesthetics of the Z-Boys than to more recent skateboarding. And when used in combination with more modern tricks like the nollie flip, the powerslide not only stands out, but also works to compliment the trick selection in the rest of the line. This blending of eras is typical of Valls’ skating and is present throughout the part. His skating helps to usher in an era of skateboarding in which (almost) anything goes; provided the style and creativity are present in the skating, exactly what is being done becomes secondary to the spirit and philosophy of finding new ways to negotiate our given environment through skateboarding.
Leo Valls - Minuit
What’s so exciting about post-historical skating is that it strips away the elitist, compartmentalized view of skating that has dominated recent years. A three stair gap is just as valid as twenty-three stair gap; depending on how the skater interprets it, the three-stair gap can even be preferable. It’s funny; as a past-time, skateboarding was born out of counter-culture and DIY mentalities – it has always been about personal progression and interpretation. But somehow, somewhere along the line, skateboarding adopted the comparative, competitive attitude that dominates sport or commerce. It seems like skaters are starting to embrace the fact that not only is skateboarding not a crime, but it is not a sport, either; it is an art, and as such, has followed a path similar to that of Western visual arts. Enjoy the freedoms of the unfolded universe.
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