Who’s afraid of contemporary art?
This book by Kyung An and Jessica Cerasi offers to “bring together all you need to give you the confidence to hold your own in conversation about contemporary art.” (p.9) It’s an A to Zed of questions about the biggest frustrations people have with contemporary art, questions that “many are still too afraid to ask and that the art world generally fails to address in a way that can be easily understood.” The authors invite us not to be afraid of “chatting about contemporary art”, and in that spirit I’ve organised this review as a kind of chatty response, appropriating their A to Zed format but not copying it too carefully. There are plenty of tangents I’ve felt inclined to slip down and many avenues I’ve left unexplored.
As If!
The first chapter asks, “Art, What For?” And the answer it gives is, “art can offer an opportunity to question, provoke and imagine; it can stimulate debate and encourage conversations with others. It is able to do so precisely because it does not prescribe one point of view, but allows for multiple meanings to emerge.”
Art is a fictitious entity then, a made object we use to make up stories around it? I like the idea but I don’t necessarily think that because art shows us that “things can be approached from many different perspectives” it necessarily “challenges the status quo.” Art is often used by the powerful to push their perspective and prop up the status quo. Does art really have to be on the side of the angels as the authors suggest?
To language then – to language alone – it is that fictitious entities owe their existence; their impossible, yet indispensable existence.
Hans Vaihinger; The Philosophy of As If.
Believe me!
You encounter an unfamiliar object in a gallery. Whether the object is in fact art is still up for discussion. “The next question to consider is, Do I believe it’s art?” And, in order to answer this question it is “vital to see that an artwork is a proposition. It is an invitation to view something as art, as more than the sum of its parts… An artist believes the work is art and the strength of that intention can compel the viewer to draw meaning from it, whatever that might be.” (p.27)
What if the artist’s intention is weak? What if I do not care to be compelled? What if I decline the proposed invitation? Does the object become less art?
Cleaners
An alternative title to the book could have been, Who’s Contemporary Art Afraid Of? and one answer would be “the cleaning staff.” As the authors announce in the first paragraph of their introduction, as curators they have both experienced “the horror of coming into the gallery and finding the cleaner had thrown one of the artworks in the bin.” (p.8)
This happens a lot (Google it.) Whole exhibitions get swept into a skip, installations are mistaken for the debris of the launch party and dumped in bin bags, and occasionally cleaners go crazy with the Mr Sheen and scrub away a potential masterpiece.
Cleaners are definitely not afraid of contemporary art. They don’t see the art beyond the sum of its parts.
The question is, why don’t the curators of these art shows include the cleaners in the conversation? They obviously need a talking to.
Disasterware
“Artists have long shocked people by flouting the conventions of their time”. (p.76) An example the authors give is Maurizio Cattelan’s Him, which “approached from behind … appears to be a very lifelike sculpture of a child kneeling in prayer, but seen from the front … is an exact, albeit miniature, waxwork replica of Adolf Hitler.” (p.76-7)
Cattelan is praised, his work appears in galleries all over the world. This is an acceptable shock to a bad convention.
A teapot in the likeness of Hitler’s face, however, “rehabilitates Hitler’s regime”. There are calls for the artist who created it to be put out of business and galleries are threatened if they dare show the work. (Charles Krafft; the whole controversy is easy to find online.)
Not all shocks are allowed, not all conventions can be flouted. Nothing objectively observable in the art object, or even the parts which make it up, is the problem. It’s the despicable nature of the artist’s beliefs. Bad people cannot make good art. Not even if they really, really believe in their work. And we shouldn’t even talk about it?
Emperor’s New Uniform
“Ultimately, it is up to each visitor to decide whether or not to call out the emperor’s new clothes.” (P.27) Unless the emperor is wearing a notorious uniform, then the visitors won’t get a chance? But then, haven’t artists frequently espoused dodgy ideologies? If you went around Leeds art gallery and removed all the work made by artists with reprehensible beliefs or behaviour you probably wouldn’t have enough left to fill my front room.
And let’s not even mention Eric Gill…
Feel the Fear and Daub it Anyway
Time and again the book makes it clear that it’s not the art that anyone fears, it’s the risk of making an idiot of yourself by asking the wrong questions. The most wrong question of all “for virtually anyone working in the art world”, is the “is it art?” question. That’s boring and irrelevant (P.27).
But, for most of the rest of us not in that rarified world that’s the most vital question. What the authors call “the real question” (“is it any good”) we assume has already been answered. That’s what curators are for? You wouldn’t go into a restaurant and wonder “is it edible?” when they put the plate in front of you. That’s the chef’s job.
Gadabout
“From Venice to Sydney, and London to Hong Kong, artists, curators, gallerists, journalists, celebrities and art students flock from megacities to the remotest locations to keep up with the latest in art. If you work in the art world, your annual calendar will most certainly revolve around the main art fairs and biennials…” (P.31)
I think I have what’s called in the business, “Biennalenvy”.
Hawthorne Effects
“Over the past two decades Spanish artist Santiago Sierra has become known for works that employ people from the most marginalised sections of society – prostitutes, drug addicts, illegal immigrants, the homeless and unemployed – to enact tasks that are meaningless and often degrading.” (p.78)
Apparently by paying six unemployed guys $30 each to have a line tattooed on their backs, and becoming famous by making a lot of cash selling the images to museums, Sierra is making a point that capitalism is bad and that we are all complicit and guilty.
Hmm, maybe I’m not the only one having trouble swallowing this line? I don’t recall ever doing anything so abominable, and if I had I wouldn’t have made it public. The worst thing about this nonsense is that the poor people feel somehow obliged for the attention they were given. (Remember, Elton Mayo paid the workers in his factory project, and they were chuffed to bits too!) Aren’t we all so jolly lucky there are artists out there who draw attention to exploitative relationships by making art out of exploiting people!
I Interact Therefore It’s Art
Before the Modernists hit the art fan the artist made all the effort. All you had to do as the audience was turn up, shut up and look up. These days the viewer does all the work. This is breaking rules and pushing boundaries. So Contemporary. (p.20)
Jeff Koons
If there was one thing I’d like to do to cause a shock it would be to interact with a Jeff Koons Balloon Dog sculpture with a packet of drawing pins … Woof! There goes $58,405,000… (p.66)
Kimono My House
“Over the past century, the ways in which art is made have expanded rapidly to include complex configurations of … materials.” (p.14)
And some materials have become off limits? No Kimono!
Less is Morbid
Inserting a tiny medical camera up your bum and projecting the images onto the floor of a gallery would seem the least artful thing you could do. I’m not sure I want to interact with anyone’s intestines. It’s no more an “incredibly personal and intimate… self-portrait that forces us to confront the facts of our physicality” (p.76) than watching an episode of Casualty. If I took a shot of my innards with a powerful electron microscope and revealed to the world my swirling subatomic particles would that be an even more deeply personal and intimate self-portrait? Would you believe it was art?
Sometimes, is it ok to titter at the artists proposition?
Modern Manners in Museums
The authors want to introduce us to the fun of chatting about contemporary art. All conversations happen in a context. The context of art speak, according to the book, is art fairs and biennials, galleries and museums, exhibitions and installations. The book is a guide to how to behave when you are introduced to contemporary art. How to move beyond “bafflement, alienation and awkwardness” (p.8) and sound like you have a clue what you are on about when asked your opinion of the latest Turner Prize shortlist.
Doesn’t this context sound too narrow, too officially approved, too top heavy? Art sounds as otherworldly to me as Ladies Day at Royal Ascot.
No Such Thing As Art
“There is no such thing as art. There are only artists.” They quote E. H. Gombrich (p.11).
The book goes on to suggest there are no such things as artists. There are only conversations about contemporary art.
On The Offensive
The authors love Marina Abramovic. (p.96) I have to admit she leaves me cold. But then there’s this video… which, thankfully, is officially high art. If it was a bunch of students having a Halloween party I think the Equality and Diversity Officer would need to get the Chancellor involved and make everyone apologise for the offensiveness.
Kreëmart at the MoCA Annual Gala 11/12/11 with Marina Abramovic and Deborah Harry from Raphael Castoriano on Vimeo.
Pretend That We’re Dead
Well, grab a handful of polka dot stickers and plaster them all over the white walls of The Obliteration Room.
“Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots we become part of the unity of our environment.” (p.108)
It takes all sorts.
Quips and Quiddities
Would be a good title for a book of art criticism? “Sophistic haggles.”
Rubbish
Is it ok to say the cleaners are often right?
Shit a Brick
The two biggest shocks caused by art in the Twentieth Century were the tins of shit (p.28) and the pile of bricks (p.26).
Would putting a cobble in a can and defecating 120 times in perfect formation on a gallery floor have shocked twice as much? Half as much?
I reckon the Tate cleaners would have refused to clean that one up.
Text
“Why is it so difficult to find plain English in the art world?” (p.114)
Plain is acceptable when describing a crisp, or flour, but why should art writing set its sights so low? Save the plain words for the Arts Council funding form. Shouldn’t writing about art aspire to be as artful as the art itself?
Urinal
Duchamp didn’t find that urinal.That urinal wasn’t submitted by Duchamp.Isn’t that shocking?
Value
The way that the system of Galleries, Museums, Exhibitions and Curators is described throughout the book makes it sound like a conspiracy against the public to keep the price of art high.
“The role of the gallery is to implement a pricing structure that rises steadily in line with the artist’s stature, protecting them from speculation and creating a secure notion of value” (p.64-5) Or, in layman’s terms, rigging the market?
Waste of Space
Ideas take up no room. Do we need the artwork? Don’t some of these fancy museums struggle to find anything decent to occupy the gallery space? (p.102)
X
“Although we think of art as the creation of an artist, the truth is it often takes hundreds of people to make art happen… it’s all about teamwork.” (p.12)
If the art is an idea does it matter whose name is on it? Who should sign it?
Yuck!
There does seem to be an awful lot of shit floating around the art world.
Zzzzz
“With the arrival of this radical notion – that something as simple as an idea could be art – the standards of aesthetics, skill and marketability by which art has so often been judged became much less important.” (p.45)
People don’t fear the anaesthetic, they worry about what happens to them when they go under. There is nothing to fear about much modern art besides being sent to sleep?