The social significance of "modern art"
May. 4th, 2008 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI 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?
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?
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 07:24 am (UTC)At one point in your post you do mention that rather than being against the common people, that modern art may be against common perceptions. I think that is closer to the mark, and could be restated in a less prejoritive way by saying that modern art challenges common perceptions and thought. I would argue that the challenge is a noble tradition of the arts, from the court jester to Defoe or Swift right through to modern satire.
Where I would, and have agreed with you, is that modern art exists in a rarefied, elitist, atmosphere. I would describe it as being irrelevant to most people, rather than being actively in opposition to them.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 02:58 pm (UTC)Philip K Dick's novels which appear to centre on the notion of personal identity were what set me off on a study of Philosophy of the mind, which has led me to hold some very different views to those I held previously.
It was Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land which caused me to look at my political views and decide that I was wooly liberal with bits of what is usually regarded as conservatism crusted arround the edges. (Strangely enough, it was a couple of stories from Warren Comics Spirit Magazine that first made me think about the ubiquitous nature of corruption in politics - now there was genius!)
One of the other discussions we are having, on abortion, is one where a song caused me to think about the subject in a much more realistic manner and see it as a much more complex issue than the 'woman's rights' issue I had thought off before. Squeezing Out Sparks, by Graham Parker had a profound and lasting impact on me. In a couple of those cases the central idea was, I think, to challenge the pre-conceived ideas of their audience and i'm glad off it.
Its weird, that I find myself in the position of appearing to defend 'highbrow' modern art. You'll notice that all the examples I have quoted are from more 'lowbrow' forms. My usual reaction to the stuff of which you speak is to think 'Prat' about the artist, but I must admit that on the one occasion I saw a Hirst piece that I was surprised with the emotional power of my reaction.
Likewise I have never quite forgotten an exhibition of Edvard Munch sketches I went to see in Belfast, solely because there was free food and drink, but I left with a totally different view of art.
So our assessment of the material of which you speak is probably very similar. And there may be a few artists who do give all the impression of dispising the rest of the world. (Tracy Emin springs to mind) Where our views seem to part company is in the general point that modern art, as a whole, is anti the common man.
Postscript: If i'm being honest I know nothing of Aeschylus save from having read his name, I think, in a foreword to or essay about Poetics, but i'll try to correct that. (This is why I enjoy these discussions so much, it sends me off in so many different directions).
no subject
Date: 2008-05-14 06:50 am (UTC)There is a difference between Edvard Munch - or even Joan Miro' - and the gesture "artists" that have dominated the landscape (at least as far as the media are concerned) since the sixties. I regard the half-century of "modern painting" and its correspondents in other artforms as a perfectly valid artistic experience, though one that tended by its own nature to exhaust itself. Once Jackson Pollock had come and gone, the impetus of what had begun in France with Cubism and in Italy with Futurism about 1910 was simply spent; nothing more could be done except imitation (I see plenty of abstract paintings in art galleries, and some of them can be excellent, but you can always tell who they are imitating) or silence. I may enlarge on this view in a coming essay on the place of Jack Kirby in twentieth century art and culture.