In the art world, increased levels of chatter

[imomus]

I'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.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Undoubtedly if I were a somewhat more Marxyesque blogger I would have angled this entry around Lynn Barber's spit-and-tell exposé (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/turnerprize2006/story/0,,1884682,00.html) of the inner machinations of the Turner jury, which ran in The Observer the day before the winner was announced. It's an interesting article, but at the same time I think it's a classic case of a journalist turning her own insecurities into a reproach against the world she's had a privileged glimpse into.

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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(Another term for what Lynn did, and for what a lot of Marxy's commentators are doing: Employee Grudge Syndrome.)

[(Anonymous)]

Do you see everything in terms of the Marxy/Momus binary?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I feel quite strongly about this: I would never have written an exposé of, say, the Whitney Museum or the Future University after being given opportunities by them. And I certainly wouldn't have written such scoops whilst

* 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.

[(Anonymous)]

What if you had been a priest privy to child abuse? Would you have exposed the catholic church?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'll amend that last sentence, if you like, to "It may not be quite so clearcut if you're examining genital mutilation, the Sicilian mafia, or priestly child abuse."

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"?

[(Anonymous)]

Given your caveat about Sicilian mafia etc., you don't seem to be saying anything much at all. We should celebrate "good difference"... except of course when there's "bad difference". Even Marxy could agree with that. It also undermines your cultural relativism. What criteria do we have to judge what "good" and "bad" differences are? Not universal ones, since you don't believe they exist. Therefore ones we simply conjure up from our own culture? Which is circular: we can't escape the prejudices of our culture, all we can do is construct exotic others, which ultimately are a reflection of ourselves...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's something in that. But I haven't ever said we can escape the prejudices of our own culture. For instance, I argue that we have to stay foreign (http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/564/lastword.asp) in Japan, and reject the interventionist, assimilationist crusades of people like Debito Aruduto (which correspond with calls by Western rightwingers for immigrants to assimilate to Western mores).

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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'd also say that the reason I prefer "good difference" attitudes to "bad difference" attitudes is that I think it's rude -- but also ineffective -- for a guest to criticize a host. That goes for Lynn Barber criticizing the Tate after they asked her to judge the Turner Prize (a huge honour for her), and it goes for foreigners in Japan too. It's ineffective because this kind of attack just makes the institutions concerned close up and become more defensive. Praised, they'd roll over. I think Jean Snow, with his unfailing praise and his selection of Japan's "good differences", is much more likely to change Japan than Marxy is. Also, people on Marxy's blog who appear to agree with him are much more likely to change him than I am. I just force him ever further into his corner.

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

"I think it's rude -- but also ineffective -- for a guest to criticize a host. "
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.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i'm personally rather fond of debido for various reasons, though i do kind of feel sorry for those around him: there's a point where his act becomes as poignant, and as pointless, as say makoto aida's NY performance telling americans to pronounce like the japanese (he seems enough of an excentric, solitary figure to arouse the same kind of pathos). as i told marxy too i think he's doing a great job and has taken a huge burden on his shoulders by becomming a sort of cornerstone, a human warning sign telling others where not to go. ultimately by going all the way i think he stands head and shoulders above marxy.

[(Anonymous)]

The social activist stands "head and shoulders" above the journalist/critic/writer. You don't say!

Marxy

[(Anonymous)]

When one chooses to live in another culture a degree of assimilation is essential so that one can locate work and become self-sufficient within that society. This has been my experience whilst living within other cultures.
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.