Why it's OK not to like modern art

I HAVE NEVER met anyone who told me they loved modern art. No one ever came up to me, their eyes glowing with pleasure, telling me I just must see, say, the new wall drawings by Sol Lewitt in the 1970s, or the smashed-plate paintings by Julian Schnabel in the 1980s, or the life-size, glazed porcelain figures by Jeff Koons in the 1990s.

I have, however, met plenty of people who have told me that I ought to like modern art. There is some place for “ought” in life, but none at all in art; art is a gift, not a duty. The people who told me that it was my job as a curator to like modern art invariably had a vested interest in so doing: either they earned their living making, teaching, criticising or curating modern art, or they came from the worlds of the media and marketing, who genuinely admire anything that can attract so much attention.

To counter this cynical, commercial compromising of artistic craft, learning and judgment, it is vital to focus on what art is actually about — on its meaning, not on its promotion, nor even its packaging. Content cannot exist without form and, obviously, marketing influences that form, as it influences everything to which we want to attract attention. The crucial question is: how good is the content? If we take our eye off that for a second, we are in danger of being distracted by the wrapping.

Unbelievable as it might seem to those unfamiliar with the world of modern art, the self-styled artist Piero Manzoni canned, labelled, exhibited and sold his own excrement (90 tins of it) in the early 1960s. The Tate has recently acquired No 68 of this canned edition for the sum of £22,300. They have coyly catalogued it as a “tin can with paper wrapping with unidentified contents”. None of those who collected Manzoni’s tins has, as far as I know, tested the veracity of their contents, but then, who would want to?

In another work, Manzoni drew a line on a strip of paper — a single long line, in ink — rolled it up, put it in a tube, sealed it and recorded the length of the line and the date of its making on a label pasted to the outside of the tube. The idea was that these tubes, containing lines of different lengths, should remain unopened.

This takes the triumph of wrapping over content to its logical, but sterile, conclusion. How can a line you cannot see be art? Nevertheless the Tate has two of these tubes in its collection.

It is all too obvious to anyone not in the art world (though always denied by those within it) that a rift has opened between the art being promoted in contemporary galleries and the art that people like to hang on their walls at home.

Samuel Kootz was perhaps the first of a new breed of art entrepreneurs, among whom Charles Saatchi is currently the best known. During the Second World War Kootz saw his big chance, not just to make New York the art capital of the world while Paris was occupied by the Nazis, but to maintain its supremacy after the war was over. This could only be achieved, Kootz realised, if the big spenders in America started to spend big money on American art.

In 1943 Kootz thought he had found the artist who could deliver the goods: Byron Browne. Browne’s art at the time was described as “individual”, “athletic” and showing “constant growth”. This gives no idea of what Browne’s paintings were actually like. In fact they now look like painfully sad imitations of Picasso. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as depicted in his triptych, could hardly look less alarming with their clippity-clop shoes, electric-whisk heads and B-movie Martian hairdos.

It is easy to make fun of Browne at this distance in time when the difference between Picasso’s innovations and the efforts of his followers has become so clear, but it is less easy to forgive Kootz. He was perhaps one of the first art dealers to apply the methods of saturation marketing to his trade. By 1951, Kootz realised that he had made a mistake and he sold all his Brownes in a deliberately demeaning sale in Gimbel’s department store. This led to panic selling by other collectors. Browne was the first artist I know of to be “dumped”, a practice that was to become common in the increasingly cynical world of art.

Browne never recovered, but who cared? By then, Jackson Pollock had come along. The English painter Bridget Riley was one of many who thought that Pollock’s art, while exciting and liberating on the one hand, was at the same time a “dead end”, leaving “nothing to be explored”. No artist could pick up where Pollock left off; none did, nor did it occur to anyone to try. While Pollock was being promoted as the greatest artist in America, Edward Hopper, a painter much more deserving of such an accolade, was being totally marginalised.

The very concept of art has been so brutalised in recent years that it is difficult to see how it can survive, let alone revive. Without a widely accepted understanding of what we mean by art, what chance has it to regenerate? The task we face is to clarify what distinguishes a genuine work of art from the ersatz products of today. The quality that links the paintings of Vermeer and Matisse, Grünewald and Picasso, and that earns them the status of works of art — a status few would deny them — is, I would suggest, the aesthetic light that appears to shine out from them. It is worth trying to get closer to what we mean by “aesthetic light”, because it is this light that will re-emerge after the eclipse has passed.

Any work of art worthy of the name has an instantaneous effect on first viewing. An artist might bring all sorts of feelings and thoughts into play, but unless he or she manages to make them all contribute to one encompassing, illuminating whole, the work of art will have no heart, no “life” of its own.

Looking at a great work of art makes one feel more fully aware of one’s thoughts yet no longer wearied by them, more exposed to one’s emotions yet no longer drained by them, more integrated, more composed — more, in a word, conscious. It is the light of consciousness that great works ignite in our minds. It is this quality of luminosity that unites the divine visions of Piero della Francesca with the nightmares of Goya. This is the light that will return to art after the eclipse has passed. A found object, whether it is a brick or a urinal, cannot by itself inspire you with a heightened level of consciousness, just because it is selected and placed in a gallery. The man who designed the urinal did not make it to inspire ideas about art, but for men to urinate into. We can admire, if we are so inclined, the achievement of his aim. Yet how can we ever really know what was in Duchamp’s mind when he put it in a gallery?

What imaginative light emanated from Rachel Whiteread’s House? It had, it is true, a mournful presence, but this effect was due to its context rather than anything inherent in its form. One could feel sorry for it, but this was essentially a sentimental response, which depended on the feelings one brought to this encounter. Artists try to make statements that transcend private associations: that is what art is — an unconditional gift to others. The greater the art is, the more detached it becomes from private meanings, and the more freely it stands as its own interpreter, to speak to all of humankind. By this criteria House does not even begin to be a work of art.

The most exciting thing that will happen as the eclipse passes will be the emergence of new talent all around us. There are thousands of artists around the world who have gone on creating art because they have not been able to do anything else with their lives, but whose work has been totally obscured.

Glorious new art, much of it modest though still valid, some of it profound, will emerge from the gloom. Among these hidden delights will be the great art of our times. The tragedy is that we cannot yet see it. Public galleries around the world show the same diet of narrow conceptualism, often by the same few, heavily promoted artists.

Great artists of the past had an easier job attracting public attention. They enjoyed, for centuries, a virtual monopoly on visual imagery. Since the invention of films and TV, photographs and colour printing, computers and DVDs, the artist’s share of the visual market has diminished considerably. But one only has to see the queues forming for a show of works by Dalí or Matisse, both of whom operated in this context, to know that there is still a hunger for the created image. It is not the need for art that has diminished, but the quality of art that is being shown. This is not because it is no longer being made. It is because a benighted view of art has a stranglehold on the few who choose what little art we are aloud to see. And the public acquiesce, because what else can they compare it with?

It is one of the most pernicious myths of modern art that we have discovered the great art of our age when, in fact, we have hardly begun to look for it.

Francis Davison was a John Sell Cotman of our era, an Abstract artist of monastic rigour. It is difficult to describe the effect of looking at his large collages made out of torn and cut coloured papers. At times it is like going for a walk when the whole visual environment — the sky, the trees, the earth and the fields — collapses about one into an encompassing, luminous pattern. Always his feeling for space and tone is immaculate, and his images glow. He worked in almost total obscurity until I put on an exhibition of his work at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1983, the year before he died.

Unknown to me, a young aspiring artist called Damien Hirst was bowled over by the show and spent the next two years trying to emulate Davison’s art, until he gave up.

Hirst wrote later: “Before I went to art school I saw a show at the Hayward Gallery of collages by an artist called Francis Davison that blew me away. When I moved to London a few years later, I was surprised to find out that nobody had heard of him, even though he’d had a big show in a major public gallery.”

Hirst learnt his lesson, and made sure that that never happened to him. He decided he would be famous whatever he did. Julian Stallabrass quotes Hirst as saying as early as 1990, before he had made his big breakthrough: “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say ‘f off’. But after a while you can get away with things.”

Julian Spalding was a founder of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. His book The Eclipse of Art: Tackling the Crisis in Art Today, is published by Prestel next Monday.

I'm not sure I've totally written it off; but from what I've experienced so far; Opera is not to my liking.

I know it's by design and no doubt can't be otherwise, but I still can't get next to the garrishness of it all, what with the use of extremes of art - exaggerated singing, exaggerated costumry (sp?; word?), exaggerated acting - it's all too much bombast for me.

And while I love a tenor, there isn't a soprano out there who doesn't make me wince during her performance.

So you see, either I'm not made for the Opera or the Opera is not made for me. But as the curator said; I'm not duty bound, so it's really no big deal right?

from

[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS (1963)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Modern art functions like a prestigious wallpaper or fabric, making a colorful decorative statement.

Indeed, there is nothing necessarily wrong with having some entirely blasé piece of colored canvas on one's wall if it improves the overal 'feel' of a room. To be sure, in many settings a piece of real artwork might be overly distracting and not really suitable.

Still, I do think there's a major "Emperor's New Clothes" movement afoot in the "art" community. Just as the shysters in that story pursuaded people that if they were intelligent they should have no trouble seeing the emperor's fine raiment, so too with today's "art" peddlers. While I'll readily admit that there are some forms of artwork which are subtle and require a certain amount of discernment to appreciate, much of today's modern "art" has no real artistic merit whatsoever.

BTW, I don't think anyone has yet linked directly to it, but I highly recommend www.artrenewal.org. Wonderful sight, with thousands of absolutely positively gorgeous artworks. I can't recommend that site enough.

Hi jalisco555,

Thanks for posting this interesting art article!

I happen to like some modern art but certainly not all of it. However, I do appreciate when artists break the rules traditionally and create something that is actually beautiful or inspiring or thought-provoking; yet, obviously, I do not place all modern art in this category.

This afternoon I was reading an essay titled "What is a Renaissance Painting?" and in this essay, the author makes the point how back in the Renaissance, a 15th centurty painting like "Madonna and Child" was not actually called a "painting."

Rather, people commonly identified works of art by "its subject, type and function."

Consequently, they would discuss this work of art "as a story or narrative depicting Christ, the Madonna and other holy figures" (subject); and explain this was an "alterpiece, an object to be placed on an altar in a church" (type); and its purpose was "to illustrate religious ritual and belief" (function).

In the same vein, I think much of what we commonly call "modern art" needs an entirely new name -- because we truly are moving out of the realm of "art," and into pure marketing.

I am thinking specifically of this show now at The Guggenheim, and I am wondering if you've seen it.

The NYT has lavishly praised the modern artist, Matthew Barney, and his show, "The Cremaster Cycle," by saying he is the "artist of the decade." However, from what I have read of it, I am not yet convinced. I will have to see it. Until then, I keep thinking: This may in fact be the silliest show I have heard of in a long time. Below is one reviewer I found who agrees with me.

The subject "artist" here (Matt Barney) is a marketing genius, that's for sure, and I'll give him credit on that count -- but, I'm still missing the art.

I think his whole show should be newly classified, for it sounds like it's actually this: "Specatator Sport."

In the meantime, I'd rather see other modern art, or Renaissance art like The Madonna and Child, or, a retrospective of that great American painter, Edward Hopper. :)

Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle

From a review posted at www.haberarts.com:

...The avant-garde, the male gaze, collage and contemplation, and big money—they already sound like a history of Modernism. In fact, [Matthew] Barney indulges in all of these. The familiarity of the movies may explain his [high] standing with critics and the public. The Guggenheim has not drawn a crowd like this one in some time. I mean not just attendance, but also a younger audience than at other museums.

His genealogy makes him interesting and challenging, too. It also makes for one of the silliest exhibitions in memory.[...]

Review by: jhaber@haberarts.com

"Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle" runs through June 11, 2003, at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum [NYC].

Hi Summer. Good to hear from you again. No, I haven't seen the work in question. Frankly, I'd have trouble just getting past the name. I'm really tired of "transgressive" art and I'm just waiting for that phase to past. That being said I'm not as down on all contemporary art as some are. There are some great things at the Museum of Modarn Art in New York and I look forward to seeing their new, expanded space. I admit to a real fondness for Jackson Pollock and I could stare at his drip paintings for hours.

It's the stuff that is deliberately offensive or purposely ugly that I strongly object to. It's not as if there's an excess of beauty in the world after all. Why deliberately create ugliness?

That sicko freak is in my texbook! Eeeew!

Hey FReepers, I need help! I have a final exam for my Art Appreciation class on Monday night. The Prof is horrible-no ability to explain this stuff to people who don't have a clue, like me.

The essay question will require us to view a piece of art, place it to time and place and describe it. The only thing we discussed along this vein is sculpture. He talked a bit about early pre-Greek sculpture, moving to Greek, and then Roman.

My text touches on this very briefly and my limited ability to draw and describe what the prof said makes my notes unhelpful.

I've looked for web sites and find pictures but not any kind of explanation for what makes what, what. Can anyone help me?

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