bory on Sat, 13 Apr 2002 20:12:09 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-ro] parerea lor despre arta |
Textul e un pic cam lung, dar merita citit - Garantat 100 la suta. Iata parerea unei anume parti a occidentalilor despre ce se intampla in arta contemporana. Parerea mea nu este departe de cele de mai jos, de asemeni, si cred ca nu sunt singurul care gandeste astfel pe aici. Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, April 6, 2002 April 6 2002 Dumbed down and robbed of the old taboos, contemporary art has lost its ability to move or stimulate us, writes John McDonald. The battlelines were drawn when Ivan Massow, the chairman of London's Institute of Contemporary Art, described much of the work shown in the gallery as "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat that I wouldn't even accept as a gift". He went on to accuse the art establishment of "disappearing up its own arse", and launched a broadside against Nicholas Serota, the all-powerful director of the Tate Gallery, whom he characterised as a "cultural tsar". Along with a talent for observation, Massow showed a gift for prophecy when he predicted his own immediate removal from the ICA's chairmanship. Within a week the board had closed ranks, and he was obliged to resign. Predictably, Massow's comments elicited a huge public response, with most of the letters and emails congratulating him on his courage. To the "art establishment" this merely confirmed the philistine attitudes of the general public, and proved that their favourite artists were striking blows against cultural complacency. Yet this is precisely the conundrum that bedevils all contemporary art: a work may look like rubbish, but so long as it is exhibited in a gallery and implicitly validated by those elite guardians of taste, the curators and critics, it takes on an untouchable aesthetic value. If a member of the public persists in saying the work is rubbish, in defiance of the art experts, he or she will be dismissed as a poor benighted fool who doesn't understand the complexities and ironies of the field. In this way, an unbridgeable gap is maintained between the public and the art establishment. There is a sense in which the industry of contemporary art is devoted to servicing that gap. The contemporary museums may express a desire to attract big audiences, emphasising their educational aims and links with the community, but their whole raison d'etre is to challenge public taste - or perhaps to "advance" public taste. There is always some resistance about exhibitions of realist art or landscape painting, for example - genres that have traditionally proved popular. Conversely, those shows that fail to attract audiences can be seen as an artistic success, beyond the scope of the philistines. It is not the acclaim of the public but its indifference or indignation that makes them confident they are showing "cutting-edge" art, not rubbish. I don't think I'm alone in feeling the turn of the millennium brought about a hiatus in the relentless advance of the contemporary art juggernaut. For a moment the international art world paused, held its breath, and waited to see what developments would descend. The age of modernism was over, and so, too, was the belief that art "progresses" through a series of revolutionary innovations. In fact, that belief had looked pretty shaky for 20 years. The postmodernist trends of the early '80s seemed to accept that a linear art history had run its course. The contemporary scene became a psychiatrist's couch, in which all the tendencies that had stalled or been repressed, were allowed to return. Expressionism was back, and so was classicism; geometric abstraction rubbed shoulders with a form of cack-handed surrealism that would eventually be dubbed "grunge". The only element common to these tendencies was irony - a quality Robert Hughes dubbed "the condom of our culture". Invisible inverted commas were placed around every born-again style, revealing the artist as a shrewd, clear-sighted manipulator of cultural forms, not simply a barbarian who charged into the studio waving a brush around in a frenzied attempt at "self-expression". From the early '80s, contemporary art has continued to diversify stylistically, while growing ever more cool and self-conscious in the way it addresses an audience. The result is a milieu in which the vast majority of practising artists, dealers and collectors, feels disenfranchised from the contemporary art institutions. They do not admire most of the "cutting-edge" art that is shown in these museums and in the big art festivals such as the biennales. They do not feel challenged or engaged by this kind of work - for the most part, they find it trivial and opportunistic. There was a time when everyone wanted to know what Picasso was doing next, but nowadays there is a strong sense in which the work of the most prominent contemporary artists is utterly irrelevant to our fundamental conceptions of "art". It is a sideshow that requires constant monitoring, but those pieces that prove moving or stimulating - indeed, those that make one pause for more than a few seconds - form a tiny percentage of the whole. What we are witnessing is a gigantic dumbing-down of art, disguised as a series of intellectual and cultural breakthroughs. None of the earlier historical models is appropriate, although their influence lingers on. The one role that is excluded is that of pre-Renaissance times, when the artist was simply considered an artisan - one kind of tradesman among others, who sought commissions from the church, the nobility or wealthy citizens. It was through the extraordinary abilities and personalities of figures such as Giotto, Michelangelo and Leonardo (and through Vasari's myth-making biographies), that a more heroic conception of the artist evolved. This reached its apogee in the Romantic era, when the master artist also became identified as a seer and a prophet; a bearer of deep, universal truths, or a harbinger of revolutionary political change. That Romantic conception of the artist lingers today, but as a kind of advertising agency parody. The turbulence of the 20th century, with its bewildering procession of "isms" - Fauvism, Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Expressionism, and so on - has left a flat and decadent legacy. Modernism burnt itself out in a blaze of confusion, and the cutting-edge art of today resembles a strange collection of makeshift huts erected on scorched earth. The heat, however, has faded. Nowadays, everything in art is lukewarm. To a certain extent this is a historical inevitability. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous 19th-century study On Democracy in America, set out to measure the benefits of social progress against the losses. "There is little energy of character," he wrote, "but laws are more humane. Life is not adorned with brilliant trophies, but it is extremely easy and tranquil. Genius becomes more rare, information more diffused. There is less perfection, but more abundance, in all the productions of the arts." This could serve as an accurate summary of Western democracy at the dawn of the 21st century. Despite our ongoing social problems, life is much easier for people in these societies than it is for those living under more repressive regimes. The price, perhaps, is solipsism and complacency - a sense that the rest of the world doesn't impinge on one's consciousness for longer than the duration of the evening news. This kind of complacency has drawn some of the blame for the events of September 11. The subsequent hysteria is a measure of how deeply we were immersed in this more comfortable and stable view of the world. Tocqueville's point about democracy leading to "little energy of character" is borne out by the political and cultural landscape of Australia, which may claim to be the world's most agreeable and stable society. Regardless of whether our leaders demonstrate little energy, their characters seem to have undergone a form of moral atrophy. The treatment of asylum seekers, the shameless political exploitation of public xenophobia, the Governor-General's reluctance to take the rap for his own moral cowardice - these are all signs of a society that has lost touch with civilised, humane qualities. "Character", per se, has been replaced by a set of expedient norms: admit nothing, take no responsibility, mouth empty slogans, be dispassionate and legalistic. This barren scenario is reflected in the realm of culture: in an Australia Council that pours money into "industry" events such as Madrid's Arco art fair, and is more interested in "new technology" than art. There is growing concern with mere forms of culture, and less willingness to make value judgements between works and artists. Art criticism has reached its lowest ebb in 20 years, as critics seem overly concerned about what they should think, and should be saying, rather than responding to the work. This results in recycled press releases or feats of dubious, unargued connoisseurship. This self-interested, defensive approach to political and cultural life is also apparent in the state of the visual arts, where, as Tocqueville says, "there is less perfection, but more abundance". After the death of modernism and the discrediting of Marxist politics, it is clear that hardly anybody still believes a work of art can have revolutionary, life-changing implications. One result is that many artists have taken a more introspective approach, opting out of the race, and concentrating on those things closest to home. Younger artists show a renewed concern for acquiring basic skills such as drawing and modelling, while the local success of so many Chinese emigre artists owes much to the rigorous academic training done in their native country. In such cases, artists are seeking what is personally relevant and enriching, not making claims about the wider public value of their projects. The antithesis of this is the ongoing comedy of an "avant-garde", where all manner of political goals may be imputed to a work, albeit nothing concrete or achievable. The "relevance" of this kind of work is entirely abstract, or so vague and universal that it fits every agenda. We are told how one work makes us aware of oppressive power relations, how another heightens awareness of social inequalities. Works are said to "activate" space and subvert the institutions that house them. But viewers who fail to read the catalogues or wall labels could look at such works all day without feeling the least bit challenged. In explaining his disparaging remarks about the latter-day "conceptual art" shown at the ICA, Massow claimed that he had long "harboured a vivid, romantic image of the institute as it was - a hotbed of '70s radicalism. It had gained a reputation for showcasing the daring and avant-garde and holding debates or showing the films and exhibitions that others were too frightened to. People went there to speak and hear the unthinkable But the irony is, now that 'shock' has become the 'new establishment', that the ICA has morphed into a pillar of the shock establishment - cultivated by the Brit pack. The protesters were there to complain that they're no longer shocked - they're bored. "Like me," he writes, "they've all sat and watched a naked woman fire a peach from her vagina knowing full well that it won't make the local paper (as intended). They've also smelt endless faeces, been titillated by pornography and scared by a chamber of horrors paraded as 'art', and yawned with the rest of us." The point is simply made: when sex, shit and horror were taboo subjects, artists could feel that by exploring these themes they were acting in a way that was socially liberating. Now that tolerance levels have advanced to the point that '70s taboos are the stuff of an average evening's television, there is no longer any convincing sense of transgression. The cinema has made more powerful and far-reaching explorations in these areas, but other art forms such as literature and the theatre are suffering from the same kind of "transgression fatigue" as the visual arts. The problem is that when audiences are pre-programmed with the expectation of being shocked, they are consequently almost shock-proof. Perhaps the only genuine taboos left are religion, child abuse and murder, and when artists stray too close to the edge - as in Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, or Marcus Harvey's portrait of the Moors murderer Myra Hindley - the public reactions can be violent and extreme. This makes for great publicity, but the threat of vandalism tends to frighten off the large art institutions and their sponsors. The kind of work that best represents the "New British Art" is a far more fatuous affair: think of the blinking light fixture that won Martin Creed the most recent Turner Prize. Neither should one forget a full ashtray by Damien Hirst that was emptied by a cleaner who failed to recognise it as a work of art. Characteristically, the artist laughed off the destruction of the piece and said he could easily make a new one. Yet even this induced a sense of deja vu, because a few years ago a cleaner in Germany had similarly disposed of a lump of fat by Joseph Beuys. Massow refers to such gimmicks as "conceptual art", but they are a long way from the dry, rigorous experiments that made up the original Conceptual Art movement that swept the world in the early '70s. There is no philosophical program behind these new pieces of "idea art", merely a puerile desire to give the finger to the public, and to art itself. This kind of art has often been described as nihilistic, and that is a hard label to refute, since it seems to serve no higher purpose than to promote its makers' media profile. Today's fashionable artists would like to be media celebrities, enjoying a frisson of notoriety like the lads from Oasis. Art itself is only a means to an end - a taste of fame that could come from pop music, football or movie stardom. Increasingly, there is little to separate the world of contemporary art from so many other fields sheltering under the umbrella of popular culture. Nothing could be further from the Romantic cliches, in which some heroic creator is driven to extremes of ecstasy and despair in his (always "his") quest for self-expression. The successful contemporary artist is cool, calculating and market-savvy, not given to emotional outpourings. As a sign of the times it is now common to hear of artists being praised for their "professionalism", as though they were barristers or medical specialists. It would not be unusual for them to walk around with paging devices, being called away from dinner parties because of some unexpected exhibition opportunity. As professionals it doesn't matter what old rubbish they produce, it will always be taken seriously by their equally professional colleagues who sell the work, write about it, or buy it for a public collection. "Life may not be adorned with brilliant trophies," as Tocqueville put it, "but it is extremely easy and tranquil." It is easy because the machinery of packaging and promotion has taken over from the awesome responsibility placed on the shoulders of the individual artist to strive towards perfection, towards the unknown masterpiece. Even to broach such a concept seems vaguely embarrassing in these rigorously "professional" times. If there is a way out of this cul-de-sac, then it may come from those artists who can no longer stand the poker-faced hypocrisy that is furthering the great divide between art and "cutting-edge" art. In fact, the time is not far distant when the word "art" may be reserved for the efforts of the institutional avant-garde, while more conventional forms of painting and sculpture are referred to as "craft". Naturally the paintings and sculptures of the past could keep the title, because they were the "cutting edge" in their own day. It may sound absurd, but contemporary art has a habit of outstripping one's wildest imaginings. For instance, could anyone not hell bent on parody have predicted that Mike Parr would be exhibiting buckets of his own urine at Artspace last year, or that Martin Creed would create a "sculpture" consisting of a screwed-up ball of paper, recently shown at a gallery in Sydney? Art today is ripe for the most gargantuan satire, and those artists who can laugh at themselves and the scene they inhabit may represent the best chance to save art from itself. John McDonald is an art critic and former head of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia. _______________________________________________ Nettime-ro mailing list Nettime-ro@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ro --> arhiva: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/