Insider Art
It's rubbish, but is it art?
I was just reading about conceptual artist Martin Creed's "Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off" coming to Boston.
The overall tone of the Globe piece is noncommittal, highlighting the typically vapid nature of the work ("every five seconds, the gallery's 67 track lights illuminate the white walls and then flick off"—save yourself a trip, go down to the basement, and flip the light switch on and off a few times—et voilà!—art), and the typically insipid "controversy" surrounding it.
Ours is a culture, after all, that shuffles listlessly, like an Alzheimers patient in the wandering stage, from made-up controversy to made-up controversy—is Britney really "fat" or simply not as thin as she used to be? Is Senator Craig "gay" or just homosexual? Is Hillary the anti-Christ, or merely his emissary on earth?
Conceptual artists are among those in the business of inventing the controversies of no consequence which serve as fuel in the engine of the great machine of culture. The machine produces nothing, and doesn't go anywhere, but it has a lot of bells and whistles and makes a lot of noise, and interpreting its clangs and rumblings gives us something to do with unneeded brain cells, fooling us into thinking we're actually thinking.
The latest model is small enough to fit in your spare
room and produces culture from ordinary household waste!
The Globe article dutifully quotes those in favor of "The Light Going On and Off" and those opposed. The latter first. A writer for the conservative National Review who imagines the artist thinking: "This will poke a finger in their damned eyes," who goes on to say: "That's not an artistic temperament. That's an adolescent temperament."
And then a fellow artist who proves his point: "It's great that people can be so annoyed about art. What a great emotional response, to think that we can be so engaged with something we call art."
I don't think you have to be a crusty old conservative to see that annoyance is not "a great emotional response," not in the sense of large or significant. And that to be pleased at such a response, whatever else it may be a mark of (low expectations, lack of standards), is certainly a mark of an "adolescent temperament."
The source of annoyance does not really engage us. It may confront us, but the tension is easily diffused: annoyance is alleviated when the source of annoyance is no longer present. Neither is annoyance an "emotion" that is difficult to produce (check out the podcast version of this post for some examples).
The problem with "works" like Creed's is not the short-term issue of a show you can skip unless you're another conceptual artist who buys into the "minor annoyance as great art" scenario (and then you'll have to imagine people being annoyed by it, since the only people to attend the show will be just like you, relishing the reaction of the non-existent annoyed masses who gave up on being annoyed by art a generation ago), it is the long-term erosion of the contract between artist and audience, largely due to professional artists' provincialism, and their hard-on against an imagined highly annoyable audience for art that never existed in the first place.
Artists sometimes seem to think that their audience needs to be worthy of them. This is another illusion, based on the mechanics of old-school art. The audience for art had to come to the gallery in the old days to see it. But things are different now. And the fact is, many self-professed artists are simply not up to the challenge of being worthy of an audience. And the audience of their peers that they've fallen back on only isolates them the more, which is why they've been circle-jerking on "the mechanics of the everyday" ever since Warhol.
We got it. We've moved on.
I mean, listen how a curator for the Tate Modern describes the profundity of "Lights going on and off": "Our negotiation of the gallery is impeded, yet we become more aware of our own visual sensitivity, the actuality of the space and our own actions within it." Translation: when the lights go out, it's hard to see and if you're not careful you'll bump into things.
Or a local curator's reaction: "the actual environment of the space changes" when you turn out the lights. I wonder how many advanced degrees he had to get before he figured that one out.
What is offensive is not merely the obviousness of it all, but the complex of interests involved in selling nothing as something, and further, fobbing it off as something profound. Curators compound the assault on the audience's intelligence by adding the eye-rollingly condescending rhetoric.
And then there's the fact that self-professed artists are no more qualified to define, produce, or discuss what art is than anyone else, but that a multitude of insular, incestuous, self-referencing and -congratulatory institutions exist to produce the effect of legitimacy for a certain idea of art that may or may not in fact have anything at all to do with it in the end.
For example, a common argument used to defend conceptual artists from charges of chicanery is put forward in the article by Mike LaChance, the City Stage theater company's program manager: "It really comes down to intention. If the artist who created it did it with the intention of it being a work of art, it is. It shouldn't matter what other people think."
But art is always other-oriented. It always matters what other people think. That a program manager of a theater company could actually argue that what other people think doesn't matter makes you wonder if he understands the business he's in. In theater that's all that matters.
The truth is if just anybody got up on stage, crouched and took a dump, and declared it art, it wouldn't be art, and LaChance knows it. You have to go to art school before you can poop on the stage and call it art.
It's shite, but is it art?
There are obvious problems with this "standard," and although it can be used as a last ditch defense of "art" artists can't adequately explain to the unschooled, it's simply not the case that the "it shouldn't matter what other people think" standard applies in the art world itself, either. The stakes are much too high nowadays. There's billions upon billions of bucks involved.
Conceptual Art is an outcropping of the corporatizing of art in general. And "Insider Artists" and Curators rely heavily on the same air of expertise you find in corporate consultancy, and the silly jargon of "negotiations" and "iterations of isms" to legitimize and inflate the worth of "works".
There is an undeniable appeal to paying unheard of prices for nothing these days. It is the ultimate in post-modern conspicuous consumption. We have so much money we can spend more than you will earn in a lifetime on... nothing.
And conceptual artists are more than happy to whore themselves, with a wink and a nudge. It's a victory for the artist, after all, who has pulled one over on the corporations, right? Meanwhile, the artist pockets the cash and plays the naif. "I don't think it's provocative," Creed says of his work. "It's just the lights going on and off. What's provocative about that?"
The problem is, each instance of pulling one over on your audience erodes your credibility. It's not a good way to do business. I mean, take another curator's take on Creed's masterpiece: "It's subversive, and there's a great element of humor," says Cheryl Brutvan, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts.
And how long does that effect last for someone with an average IQ? ten seconds? Fifteen? Then what?
The reason the local gallery is showing it, and the reason curators are extolling it is because it won the Turner Prize. And if it won the Turner Prize there must be a reason, right? The art world is an echo chamber. It's like the fashion world. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you're not in on the joke. And there is nothing so easily exploited in this day and age as the fear of not being in on the joke.
But what happens when the joke isn't particularly clever or funny or sly? When "getting it" entails the facile realization that there's nothing to get?
It's just not a very satisfying revelation. No wonder people get annoyed.
Truth is, the "But Is It Art?" school of art has about been exhausted. It's telling that it took Creed's most benign work almost a decade to arrive in Boston and cause a buzz in the local arts hive.
Meanwhile, Creed has moved on to infinitely more annoying and adolescent outbursts (he has lately fashioned himself into a sort of inarticulate, Tourettes-afflicted David Byrne). His work since "The Lights Going on and Off" has visited all of the requisite body parts, their functions and effluvia...
It's barf, but is it art?
Creed in front of a recent work.
So is it anal sex or anal art? That is the question.
But Boston will have to wait another decade or so before it finds out.
Its too easy to cry 'bullshit' and to bring into question the role of art and artists and what gets decided as art. That old argument aside, its important to note that Conceptual art is actually not anything "new" having its heyday in the 1960s and 70s and is on a quite downward slope, Turner prize notwithstanding.
Your all-over-the-place arguments are flawed for several reasons, but probably most glaring is your anger toward these artists calling themselves "self-professed" and "happy to whore themselves". These people are skilled professionals most of the time and like any skilled professionals, they work within a system (i.e. galleries). What other occupation can you call someone "self-professed" and get away with it? They are artists because they make art. However its defined, like it or not. Your resentment toward them does not change that nor does your own self-professed expertise.
You also make the presumption that there is nothing to "get" with this artwork and like most people who make blanket statements such as this, I'll bet you didn't get off your butt to see the damn thing for yourself while it was in Boston.I suspect that if you had, you would have said so in your entry. Its much safer to make dismissive armchair statements and generalizations about things you don't have a clue about. How insightful.
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Thanks for your comment, Dave! If I hurt you I'm so sorry. Your email was so full of anger and resentment I thought I should reply personally ...
No. Totally joking. The implication of characterizing my idle musings on art as motivated by anger, resentment and ignorance in your response--which I'd venture was defensive, utterly devoid of humor, and frightfully condescending, itself--so there!--is that my opinions were not based on informed or reasoned inquiry. I got it!
And I can't argue with someone who sees only anger, resentment and lack of insight in an artist and art-lover's earnest, if feisty, inquiry into the terms of a contract not between artists and curators (which is another matter), but between artists and the audience for art. This was the essence of the post, Dave. Not nearly so convoluted as you would have it, I stated it clearly enough:
"And then there's the fact that self-professed artists are no more qualified to define, produce, or discuss what art is than anyone else, but that a multitude of insular, incestuous, self-referencing and -congratulatory institutions exist to produce the effect of legitimacy for a certain idea of art that may or may not in fact have anything at all to do with it in the end."
Your response seems to prove my point. To paraphrase: "we have a system, you don't. It works, yours doesn't. You don't have a clue about it. So shut up."
While I was impressed by the elegant simplicity of your approach, I still think there are a lot of legitimately interesting and fruitful questions here--not only about the systematizing you alluded to, and who it's for, and what it means for art, and the nexus of those who produce it, promote it, and those who go to it for a sense of meaning--but in examining what art does in society and how our concept of art evolves in response to our environment.
Personally, I firmly, fervently, religiously believe that art belongs not only to artists and curators, but to all of us. That belief, not any anger or resentment, informs my responses to art. I am not a casual observer. Art, in all its unruly manifestations, informs every aspect of my life. Art has saved my life more than once. It saves my life every day. For someone to tell me, in all seriousness, that these are "things you don't have a clue about." Well, frankly, I don't have a clue as to how to respond to that.
So I will stick to what I do know. It's my opinion, as a moderately intelligent medium-informed participant in culture, that the issues Creed & Co., are exploring are exhausted. And that in a half-century of conceptual art (I do have some inkling of art history, having studied it in college) -- its practitioners and active detractors have totally alienated what was once an engaged audience and ended up all but snuffing out the real, vital discourse on art in the wider culture -- that's my point -- the wider culture -- that in the end defines the character and informs the soul of a civilization.
This cynical, scorched-earth approach has had real-world implications. I studied art and music from the time I started school. Kids in public schools don't nowadays as a matter of course. That reflects, in part, the degree to which art has become an insular ministry unto itself (with its own increasingly arcane jargon) where it was in living memory still better integrated into the wider culture (art was highly politicized by the right and left and was central to America's Culture War a quarter century ago -- the fact that it no longer is is indicative of its declining vitality as a cultural resource).
When the debate comes down to "because I said so," as your response suggests (reread it before you get your panties in a bunch, please), I'd say that that's a dialectical dead-end. I don't think that's an indefensible position, as you seem to, or that anyone critical of it is of necessity angry, resentful, or ignorant.
If being actively engaged in legitimate inquiry about art (which, again, you say straight-up I know nothing about--a wee bit presumptuous on your part -- just because I don't dance around in my underwear in public doesn't mean I'm not an artist, Dave) doesn't qualify me to respond critically to the central conceits of concept art, would a degree from MassArt make a difference?
And of course I did not go to "The Lights Going On and Off," you silly ass, and make no apologies for not having done. If Martin Creed can phone it in, so can I.
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Mike,
"America's Culture War?" Sorry, I missed out on that in college.
"And of course I did not go to "The Lights Going On and Off," you silly ass, and make no apologies for not having done. If Martin Creed can phone it in, so can I."
-Uh, thats the point of art, isn't it? To engage in the stuff... to see it firsthand. Sorry, but armchair assessments have little value except in the holy blogosphere.
"If being actively engaged in legitimate inquiry about art (which, again, you say straight-up I know nothing about--a wee bit presumptuous on your part -- just because I don't dance around in my underwear in public doesn't mean I'm not an artist, Dave) doesn't qualify me to respond critically to the central conceits of concept art, would a degree from MassArt make a difference?"
-Yes, actually. Then you'd be able to write about it. For all that bad art out there, there is as much bad art writing. I'm not attacking you personally or your relationship to art... I'm saying you're biased. Which is cool. And it's clear that if you are indeed 'sticking to what you know' when it comes to art, than you don't know so much about serious art writing. You're not objective, you have preconceived inotions, and going back to the point above you didn't see the damn thing.
"art has become an insular ministry..." There's your cynicism, right there. That and "just because I don't dance around in my underwear in public doesn't mean I'm not an artist". Most artists I know are the most optimistic people on the planet just working on their stuff. Most institutions These women and men know they are part of a scheme since Impressionists started toying with the picture plane and the Dadaists, Cubists, Futurists who tore it down altogether. Its an exciting time actually to be an artist, despite what you may think. The art system is broke in a lot of ways, sure... like any and I'm certainly not claiming it as "my" system to be sure. But great art is happening in places like the Mills in shows like this because they create this kind of dialogue, and for other reasons
But, I suspect you're not interested in dialogues from what few entries I've read in your blog. You're a monologist, which, again, is cool. It explains why dissenting opinions (like this one) never grace your comments fields and why the language you use is like your looking down on everyone else. Um, whose insular ministry?
Best Regards,
D
P.S.
"...I still think there are a lot of legitimately interesting and fruitful questions here--not only about the systematizing you alluded to, and who it's for, and what it means for art, and the nexus of those who produce it, promote it, and those who go to it for a sense of meaning--but in examining what art does in society and how our concept of art evolves in response to our environment."
-Sounds like praise for Creed's piece if you asked me.
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Jesus, Dave, call off the dogs lol!
By the way, your comment, which you posted to my old blog, was posted to my active one when I received it, and is there for all the world to see.
Cheers,
Mike
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Dogs are off, Mike. Its art. Its my livelihood and I get defensive.
I like your revised "Awake" cover, BTW.
Happy holidays.
Regards, d
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(I still think Martin Creed's a wanker.)
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i heart you mennonno
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