I have seen some contemporary art
Posted: 2009-04-01 03:41pm
I have a definition of 'art'. It's a pretty inclusive one; I consider anything art if it's a project, which goes beyond the utilitarian, that expresses a view or idea through creative means. For me, fingerpaint is art. So is a nice bridge, or a well-drawn cereal box. Not everybody is an artist but if they make an effort to turn their thoughts into physical reality I will respect that.
Today I visited an exhibition on contemporary art, and there I did not see much art.
Now, there were a few installations I genuinely liked. A series of photographs had been taken of a particular mountain at various times and dates, then printed on canvas; that was nice. A Mac Mini printing texts via a machine that perforates sheets of paper obviously had some thought put into it. You can't not admire a giant paper Ghandi. And the "artificial beach", while silly, was obviously a labour of love (A pretty clever one too. The centrepiece was a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption that used hair dryers and sound effects to simulate sitting by the sea).
But the rest was shit. Pretentious, meaningless, overblown shit. I don't care what tomes of deep philosophical musings you can write about a cube, at the end of the day it's a cube of cement. A medium-sized set of bricks doesn't get any more special because you washed it in a stream. A grainy, two-minute video of hands playing with a piece of plastic is just that.
Then it got worse. The above are silly but essentially harmless. Some of the "installations" however were downright disturbing; I completely fail to see the "art" in a video of a man cutting himself with razors, or a female artist having herself inseminated with sperm of a deceased man, or a video clip of the "artist" shooting some guy with a .22 to see what happens. That is not art. There is no single meaningful definition of the word where this would be "art". Art creates, explores, makes things happen; it doesn't destroy just for the kick of it. I can safely say that at least a good half dozen of the so-called "artists" in that exhibition needed a straitjacket sooner than any sort of recognition.
I'm sure this'll peg me as some sort of artistic barbarian, or unleash a flood of people complaining about artists in general; I don't want either. I'm perfectly happy to let people create and enjoy anything they want, as long as I reserve the right to consider it irredeemable shit; I'm not calling for a list of Entartete Kunst. I am wondering though about what happened to the idea that you actually needed any semblance of either skill or honest effort before you work was deemed good enough to be exhibited. Are there actually people who like looking at an artist cutting her wrists and drawing circles with the blood? Is there anyone who considers this a valid contribution to the art canon, or is this a case of the emperor having no clothes?
Or am I just an old grumpy bastard?
Today I visited an exhibition on contemporary art, and there I did not see much art.
Now, there were a few installations I genuinely liked. A series of photographs had been taken of a particular mountain at various times and dates, then printed on canvas; that was nice. A Mac Mini printing texts via a machine that perforates sheets of paper obviously had some thought put into it. You can't not admire a giant paper Ghandi. And the "artificial beach", while silly, was obviously a labour of love (A pretty clever one too. The centrepiece was a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption that used hair dryers and sound effects to simulate sitting by the sea).
But the rest was shit. Pretentious, meaningless, overblown shit. I don't care what tomes of deep philosophical musings you can write about a cube, at the end of the day it's a cube of cement. A medium-sized set of bricks doesn't get any more special because you washed it in a stream. A grainy, two-minute video of hands playing with a piece of plastic is just that.
Then it got worse. The above are silly but essentially harmless. Some of the "installations" however were downright disturbing; I completely fail to see the "art" in a video of a man cutting himself with razors, or a female artist having herself inseminated with sperm of a deceased man, or a video clip of the "artist" shooting some guy with a .22 to see what happens. That is not art. There is no single meaningful definition of the word where this would be "art". Art creates, explores, makes things happen; it doesn't destroy just for the kick of it. I can safely say that at least a good half dozen of the so-called "artists" in that exhibition needed a straitjacket sooner than any sort of recognition.
I'm sure this'll peg me as some sort of artistic barbarian, or unleash a flood of people complaining about artists in general; I don't want either. I'm perfectly happy to let people create and enjoy anything they want, as long as I reserve the right to consider it irredeemable shit; I'm not calling for a list of Entartete Kunst. I am wondering though about what happened to the idea that you actually needed any semblance of either skill or honest effort before you work was deemed good enough to be exhibited. Are there actually people who like looking at an artist cutting her wrists and drawing circles with the blood? Is there anyone who considers this a valid contribution to the art canon, or is this a case of the emperor having no clothes?
Or am I just an old grumpy bastard?