The social significance of "modern art"

[fpb]

I have long since come to the conclusion that the the term "modern art", as used for the kind of guff exhibited at Tate Modern or that receives government grants, is usurping. Bob Dyland is a modern artist; so is Alan Moore; so is JK Rowling. They are people who live in the modern age and who produce works of art - I would say, great art. What is normally called modern art, on the other hand, is not in the same category at all; the best way it could be defined is "gesture for its own sake". I rather suspect that it gets away with its usurpation of the term because, while there are well-established alternative dictionary terms for people who make a living as Dylan, Moore or Rowling do - musician, cartoonist, novelist - there is none for people who induce government bodies or rich individuals to disburse money to them for meaningless gestures. Art it is, then - in default of any other terms.

I know a thing or two about the great arts, I hope; and I have been lucky enough to meet or be in touch with a number of out-and-out geniuses and extraordinary artists. (kennahijja and haikujaguar, are you listening?) One of these was a lady called Denny Derbyshire, for whom I would use without any concern the word "genius". She is a craftswoman, painter and cartoonist who lives in Ulverston, Cumbria, and produces or used to produce works of sublime, dreamy simplicity largely for her small circle of friends and admirers. I have lost contact with her since I left comics, which I regret.

At any rate, before I lost touch, we exchanged a number of interesting letters. In one of them, she complained about the cult of ugliness that seemed to dominate the official artistic world. This set me to thinking, and what follows - with a few corrections - is what I answered:

It's not so much that "beautiful" is a dirty word in art circles, as you suspect; in my view, it is that it is meaningless. If you presumed to give a positive view of a work of art on the grounds that it is beautiful, the average art critic would look at you blankly, as though you'd praised it on the ground that it was triangular, or mint-flavoured. The very idea has been, in art-critical discourse, excised; I suspect that young students at Goldsmiths' (Note for non-Britons: Goldsmith's is the University of London's college of choice for aspiring artists) or such places never even hear the suggestion that art might be beautiful.

The art theory that gave us Hirst (and plenty of people before him) has a curious idea of the human mind as an anvil to be hammered everlastingly; or rather, of a walnut to be cracked eternally. Human understanding must be treated aggressively. Common perceptions are always to be overturned. Where all this overturning is to take us is not clear; one suspects that, in the theory, the nut is an enchanted nut, that repairs itself after each cracking (and wouldn't that image have delighted someone like Chesterton! The mind as an enchanted walnut; perhaps a silver one. Think about it. Uh-oh, I've got the feeling I may have given you a subject). At the very least, it would seem that the overturning is an end in itself.

The purpose of the artist, then, is not to communicate a truth, but to break down a resistance. It is assumed that any person's perceptions are inevitably in need of breaking down. Hence the emphasis on language, rather than on content; indeed, it may be doubted whether the likes of Hirst or Rachel Whitehead ever seriously believe they are expressing any content at all. They are raiders of language and artistic discipline, and their works - often destructible and intended to be consumed and thrown away - are not meant to have any lasting use beyond the assault. Having done their piratical raid on the outposts of bourgeois self-consciousness, they withdraw in their longships, leaving only smoking ruins behind; not even a temple of Thor. The assault is all.

Except that it may be doubted whether bourgeois self-consciousness is really so dented. There is a disturbingly smug and smooth tone to a lot of avant-garde theorizing (though I'm more familiar with contemporary music than art) that suggests more the academic apparatchik than the rebel. There is a sense that the modern artists have it all cut and dried; and though they talk an awful lot of rebellion, in fact the dominating institutions - academia, the State, the museums, the media - welcome them with open arms. Newspapers and TV programs dedicate to the Hirsts and their backers all the space they do not give to the likes of you.

Since the masters of our world, then, are quite happy, and indeed complicit, with all this artistic rebellion, who is it that it is really aimed at? Because the hostility, the aggressiveness, the raider mentality, are undeniable. There is something that "modern art" is really against.

The disturbing conclusion has to be that it is against the common people; or at least, the common perceptions. The meaning of academia promoting, the State financing, and the media publicizing, Turner Prize-type art, are to force upon the public the fact that Art denies their common perception.

It's not really as bad as I made it sound. The common public, tolerant and weary, does not really feel so crushed as all that; they look on in dumb amazement, put it all down to the strangeness of the world, and go away. The implicit aggression, the implicit condemnation, hardly reach them. And so we come to what seems to me the undeniable reality of what calls itself modern art - though in effect it excludes the very large majority of today's artistic endeavour. It is a matter of ego-reinforcement for those who practice it and those who support it. This elaborate and ongoing system of denouncing common or standard perception serves to separate the common herd, whose language and perceptions it exists to attack, from the social groups that share in it.

What is harmful about this system is that it enforces upon the common people the notion that art is something above their heads. Whatever else they misunderstand or ignore, they certainly do not misunderstand that. It doesn't matter how many efforts are made to popularize "modern art", as long as modern art is taken to be what it is it will separate the public from itself. Indeed, the very effort produces the reverse result, because it popularizes just those kinds of art which are, by their nature, more exclusive and aggressive.

The result is wretched for the likes of you: the majority of your potential audience will never even think of developing an interest in art; it is a "difficult" subject by definition. Elbowed out of the public gaze by the pushy Hirsts and Whiteheads, serious artists like you and this Andy Goldsworthy you mention (I never heard of him - doesn't it just show you?) have to live in the cracks and carry on for the love of it.

Opinions?

Comments

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

Murdoch gets rich off Groening while Groening gets rich off Murdoch. Meanwhile, everybody gets to benefit from having some really good art delivered. Would it be better for Groening to fund someone less evil? Only if the less evil someone had control of an equally powerful distribution medium, methinks.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

YOu speak as though the evil of Rupert Murdoch were an abstract consideration, something bombinating in a void. It is not. I think it is possible to describe and quantify the cultural disaster that this man's publications and ways of advertising and publishing have been for the United Kingdom alone - and I do not even want to consider what the wretch has done on the wider stage. It can all be summed up in two words: THE SUN. The worst newspaper in the world, the haunt of vulgarity, brutality, degraded machismo, impoverished vocabulary, screaming headlines, and the most horrible discouragement to read and write. I grant you that nothing of what Murdoch did was new: but he synthetized everything possible that was bad and addictive at the same time. His journalism has the same relationship to previous journalism as crack cocaine has to coca leaves, and it has no, repeat no, redeeming features. It might be said that the Daily Mirror, even before Robert Maxwell, had many Murdochian features; but then, the Mirror published Beachcomber and Keith Waterhouse. The old Daily Express had certainly taken the press down a peg; but it still published Giles' cartoons - and it did so because Lord Rothermere himself had actually gone and convinced the former left-wing cartoonist to work for him, having spotted his genius. Nobody of even moderate talent ever worked for The Sun, and I think it typical of the rag that its cartoons were so appallingly low in quality and skill as to make it unbelievable that this was the country's largest publisher that selected them, and not some miserable amateur rag with no choice. Everything about the Murdoch Press is intended to drive the level of argument, feeling and values down, down, down. And it is directly his own influence that makes it what it is, according to everyone who knows him. And that being the case, the fact that Matt Groening is working for Murdoch is as bad as if he were working for the Mafia, and for much the same reason.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

The Daily Mirror is redeemed (however partially) by publishing a genius, and Murdoch is not?

I speak of Murdoch's evil as if it were an established fact that I am powerless to change. I'll not begrudge Groening the source of his money - given the choice between having him be a martyr to his cause and having him be a success (both in financial and artistic terms), I'll choose success.

This world contains snakes, spiders and Rupert Murdoch. I could hate them for being vile creatures if I wanted to, but my hatred wouldn't change the kind of creature that they are. Instead, I focus my hatred on things that can be changed by it. If you are in a better position to change Murdoch than I am, then perhaps your feelings can be directed effectively in his direction - I know that mine are better spent elsewhere.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Groening does not appear in THE SUN. In fact, I have gone out of my way to record my outrage at the appalling, less-than-amateur standards of this newspaper's cartooning. If you had asked me to judge Sky One, I might be more circumspect. But this wretched newspaper has been driving down standards in the United Kingdom since 1978. Work it out: it is longer than perhaps half of us have been able to read and write. Its influence is incalculable (for most of its history, it sold more than five million copies a day) and it is poisonous from top to bottom.

And if Groening could sell his genius to the Dirty Digger, he could sell it to someone else. Or at least take it away from Page Three land as soon as it had become a saleable asset.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of your outrage at The Sun newspaper, you communicated that quite successfully. If I recall correctly, the topic at hand is the the relationship between money and art, which led to morality of Matt Groening, and the question is whether this is influenced by his association with Murdoch. I've not had a good word to say about The Sun, nor about Murdoch.

And if Groening could sell his genius to the Dirty Digger, he could sell it to someone else. Or at least take it away from Page Three land as soon as it had become a saleable asset.

He probably could, yes. Not being aware of the details, I am in no position to comment on whether he would be able to make an arrangement that meets his needs with someone else. I'm not convinced that any of the other media barons are more moral, although Murdoch is undeniably effective when he aims for the gutter.

This has, however distracted us from the point, which was the Rozz Tox manifesto. Which is to say "If you want to be successful in the mainstream, it is pointless to wait for the mainstream to find you. You must change the course of that river for yourself."