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imomusI'm not sure whether this says more about where culture's heading or where I'm heading, but I can't help noticing that, whereas a couple of years ago I was writing a lot about design, these days I seem to be writing more and more about art. The answer, I suppose, is both: internationally, art is booming, with more and more visitors flocking to art fairs like Frieze or Art Basel Miami Beach (which opens tomorrow -- even my next-door neighbour here in Berlin is flying off to see it today).
More art fairs, more biennials, more prizes, more visits to blockbuster museum shows of contemporary art, more art sales, more art books and magazines being published and sold, more need for text to fill out the pages. Of course, it's text that, by and large, nobody reads: art books tend
to live or die by their visuals, with text as a sort of small-print guarantee that the author has been legitimated by scholars as well as the market. But it's the market, not the scholar, which really gives the work value.
And so commissions flood in; this month alone I have to write a 2000 word essay for a monograph (published by Edinburgh's excellent Collective Gallery) about a young artist (he won the Beck's Futures Prize this year) called Matt Stokes and a 1000 word profile of another young artist, Jordan Wolfson, for Zoo magazine. And as someone with a parallel career as an artist myself, I also generate my own fair share of printed art-gabble; next week, Spike, an Austrian art magazine, will publish a dialogue between the two Momuses, the performance artist and the pop musician, and in the spring Phaidon will publish their survey of emerging artists, "Ice Cream", with an essay on my work by curator Philippe Vergne.
One interesting thing about the "increasing chatter" of art talk is that it's happening at a time when ideologies and big ideas are dead; where once art dialogue would have been filled with ideas from Marxism, psychoanalysis, or post-structuralist French theory (most of it half-digested and badly-written), now it tends to be much more situational, social and direct. Sure, the current ArtForum has a big piece on French philosopher Alain Badiou as its centrepiece, but I'd say the general tendency is for art writing to be chatty and informal, a bit like Matthew Collings' admirably direct and honest diary pieces for Modern Painters -- modelled, I've always thought, on Andy Warhol's diaries, and focused on the networks of personal relationships that so much define the art world. In the same Warholesque spirit are the regular Art World Power 100 lists published by ArtReview. It's pretty irresistible to leaf through and see who's in, who's out (wow, Klaus Biesenbach isn't even in there, but my own gallerist, Zach Feuer, is at 70!), even if you do feel a bit yuk afterwards.
The week in which Art Basel Miami opens is also the week the Turner Prize gets awarded; on Monday night it went to Tomma Abts. Relevant facts: Abts is German, a woman, a painter and a quiet, meticulous abstractionist who's been working on the same format of canvas for years. It's interesting that, of these identities, it was the "painter" part that got the journalists excited. To be a woman artist is no longer a story, to be
a foreign artist winning Britain's top art prize is not news, and to be abstract hasn't been shocking for a century. But to be a painter... well, knock me down with a squirrel-hair brush! The Stuckists have won! But they'll have to change their motto (cheekily adapted from a Martin Creed neon) "THE WHOLE WORLD MINUS THE TURNER PRIZE = A BETTER WORLD". Change the minus to a plus, perhaps, guys?
Andrew Renton, one of the Turner judges this year, gives an object lesson on how to do art chatter in the audio files on the Tate's site. I must say I was thoroughly uninspired by this year's choices, and didn't really even have a favourite. But Andrew's commentary did help me muster some enthusiasm for all of them. I used to hang out with him in London, oh, years ago, and even have a cassette tape he gave me somewhere of himself and Lawrence Crane doing silly rap numbers about sumo wrestling and minimalist composers under the pseudonym "Andy R and the Funkmaster Crane". If I'd made the Turner shortlist this year, I could certainly have blackmailed my way to the prize.
More art fairs, more biennials, more prizes, more visits to blockbuster museum shows of contemporary art, more art sales, more art books and magazines being published and sold, more need for text to fill out the pages. Of course, it's text that, by and large, nobody reads: art books tend
to live or die by their visuals, with text as a sort of small-print guarantee that the author has been legitimated by scholars as well as the market. But it's the market, not the scholar, which really gives the work value.And so commissions flood in; this month alone I have to write a 2000 word essay for a monograph (published by Edinburgh's excellent Collective Gallery) about a young artist (he won the Beck's Futures Prize this year) called Matt Stokes and a 1000 word profile of another young artist, Jordan Wolfson, for Zoo magazine. And as someone with a parallel career as an artist myself, I also generate my own fair share of printed art-gabble; next week, Spike, an Austrian art magazine, will publish a dialogue between the two Momuses, the performance artist and the pop musician, and in the spring Phaidon will publish their survey of emerging artists, "Ice Cream", with an essay on my work by curator Philippe Vergne.
One interesting thing about the "increasing chatter" of art talk is that it's happening at a time when ideologies and big ideas are dead; where once art dialogue would have been filled with ideas from Marxism, psychoanalysis, or post-structuralist French theory (most of it half-digested and badly-written), now it tends to be much more situational, social and direct. Sure, the current ArtForum has a big piece on French philosopher Alain Badiou as its centrepiece, but I'd say the general tendency is for art writing to be chatty and informal, a bit like Matthew Collings' admirably direct and honest diary pieces for Modern Painters -- modelled, I've always thought, on Andy Warhol's diaries, and focused on the networks of personal relationships that so much define the art world. In the same Warholesque spirit are the regular Art World Power 100 lists published by ArtReview. It's pretty irresistible to leaf through and see who's in, who's out (wow, Klaus Biesenbach isn't even in there, but my own gallerist, Zach Feuer, is at 70!), even if you do feel a bit yuk afterwards.The week in which Art Basel Miami opens is also the week the Turner Prize gets awarded; on Monday night it went to Tomma Abts. Relevant facts: Abts is German, a woman, a painter and a quiet, meticulous abstractionist who's been working on the same format of canvas for years. It's interesting that, of these identities, it was the "painter" part that got the journalists excited. To be a woman artist is no longer a story, to be
a foreign artist winning Britain's top art prize is not news, and to be abstract hasn't been shocking for a century. But to be a painter... well, knock me down with a squirrel-hair brush! The Stuckists have won! But they'll have to change their motto (cheekily adapted from a Martin Creed neon) "THE WHOLE WORLD MINUS THE TURNER PRIZE = A BETTER WORLD". Change the minus to a plus, perhaps, guys?Andrew Renton, one of the Turner judges this year, gives an object lesson on how to do art chatter in the audio files on the Tate's site. I must say I was thoroughly uninspired by this year's choices, and didn't really even have a favourite. But Andrew's commentary did help me muster some enthusiasm for all of them. I used to hang out with him in London, oh, years ago, and even have a cassette tape he gave me somewhere of himself and Lawrence Crane doing silly rap numbers about sumo wrestling and minimalist composers under the pseudonym "Andy R and the Funkmaster Crane". If I'd made the Turner shortlist this year, I could certainly have blackmailed my way to the prize.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 09:34 am (UTC)Journalists have divided loyalties -- to the world they have specialist knowledge of, and to the wider world outside it. It's all too easy, at the end of your allotted access time to the specialist world, to report back to the much bigger, more powerful world of normality that everything is fixed in the specialist world, or shabby, or elitist, or mad, or whatever, and to claim to be Jane Doe or Nora Normal, somewhat baffled by the whole shebang. The thing is, this is a "situational betrayal". At the end of your privileged glimpse, you burn your bridges and slag people off (no doubt breaking all sorts of legal agreements you signed), knowing that the information has value and interest to the wider world. But that big world is obviously much bigger and more powerful than the little world you visited, no matter how privileged. So you're handing over a little world to a big one. Also, perhaps it would have been more telling to see the little world as the big world in microcosm. In other words, if you find stuff wrong in the little world, it's probably a problem in Nora Normal's life too. The Marxy equivalent would be admitting that a lot of the things he finds problematical in Japan are at least as problematical elsewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 09:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 10:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 10:05 am (UTC)* claiming not to understand the worlds they contain
* claiming that undermining the social synergies that underpin these specialist worlds somehow helps Mr and Mrs Normal
* over-representing the power of the little specialist world and under-representing the power of the big normal world.
* making the small world seem malign and the big world seem benign.
My approach, instead, would be to say that any problems that exist in the small world probably exist in the big world too -- best tackle them there. And that, insofar as the small world is different from the big world, we should celebrate "the good difference" it incarnates. That's particularly evident when you're talking about the art world or Japan -- great examples of "good difference". It may not be quite so clearcut if you're examining genital mutilation or the Sicilian mafia, obviously.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:23 am (UTC)But perhaps you might like to amend your question, too. How about: "What if you had been a priest privy to child abuse? Would you have exposed the child abuse"?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:58 am (UTC)Generally, I prefer culturally-rooted celebration of good differences, exoticist or not, to culturally-rooted exposés of bad differences. On an individual psychological level, I think what happens is that we find elective affinities with "the other", advance towards it, find it's different than the narcissistic self-projection we made (idealized difference), nevertheless find things to love about the real difference, and allow ourselves to be changed by what we discover... without ever forgetting that we remain, ourselves, other.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 04:27 pm (UTC)but that's a game that made many artists succesful, especially the "wiener aktionisten". but maybe, nowadays, the court jester position isn't as hot any more.
also not very hot: the artreview "power" list with only one female artist ... less power to art(estoste)review, i say.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-08 03:28 am (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:40 pm (UTC)Does my application of this prosaic practicality make me a right-winger?
Supposing it does not, can you still find bona fide right-wingers in our post-ideological age?
Regards.
Thomas Scott.
Stuckists
Date: 2006-12-06 10:15 am (UTC)Re: Stuckists
Date: 2006-12-06 10:22 am (UTC)There goes all my credibility at the Tate! And I have to play a gig there (http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/lateattatebritain/lateattatebritain2007january.htm) in January! I'll have to do it with a paper bag over my head now!
Re: Stuckists
Date: 2006-12-06 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Stuckists
Date: 2006-12-06 04:25 pm (UTC)Re: Stuckists - no need for concern
Date: 2006-12-07 12:31 am (UTC)In response to someone else's comment, as for painting, that's only the starting point. It's what's in it that counts, and there aint' much in Abts apart from postmodern wallpaper design.
Charles
Stuckism
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 04:28 pm (UTC)I'm glad to hear the art world is booming though, wish I could get on the gravy train. Or at least participate. Guess I only have myself to blame; I don't network enough and I live in the provinces. Oh and maybe I have no talent.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 04:55 pm (UTC)"Tomma Abts paints silly little meaningless diagrams that make 1950s wallpaper look profound works of art in comparison. There are thousands of painters in the country who have something relevant to say about deeper experiences of life. Her work deserves a prize for vacuous drabness. It looks like doodles done by a lobotomised computer. Even Microsoft screensavers look attractive in comparison."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:03 pm (UTC)Seriously, though, that motto is awful. Everyone will just say "Yes." Which I don't think is really what they want people to do.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:22 pm (UTC)the whole world + the work = the whole world
Art adds nothing to the already-full world. That's the pointless bit. Why do anything? Why make work? It changes nothing. But art is both an addition to, and part of, the world. That's the hopeful, beautiful part. We can't change the world, but we can belong to it, and make things that belong to it. As consolations go, it's massive.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:35 pm (UTC)The Turner prize committee moves in
mysteriousstupid ways.(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:22 pm (UTC)It seems impossible to escape the world of business, doesn't it? Not that there's anything truly evil with that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 09:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 11:57 pm (UTC)Thomas Scott.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-07 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-07 03:28 am (UTC)I've noticed...
Date: 2006-12-07 07:03 am (UTC)Re: I've noticed...
Date: 2006-12-07 10:51 pm (UTC)I'm fairly certain that Byron and Wilde both have said something to that effect - likely fairly often.
My friend Cole Bellamy summed up the fine lines of meaning in art and, essentially, the basis of aestheticism with this (parpahrasing here): "If you can say it, say it. Why bother with art that sums up something you can say in one sentence?"
It's quite alot of fun to chatter on about something that cannot really be said at all. It's one of art's great paradoxes and that makes it fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-07 08:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 07:48 am (UTC)No matter how artistic or design oriented you like to be, as it stands now, you're just part of the business and investment world - that goes for New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc. You are exactly who you hate - a capitalistic American investor, just one of the people that work in his game.
You're art friends and the scene you're a part of? It's a breeding ground that only exists for potential investors - I'm sure you know how much art is a commodity now - and what else are commodities? Gold, oil, real estate, etc. Enjoy the life, but never criticize capitalism, because Momus = Capitalism.