Shelley Jones: Wake up artists
Has the modern art world become a festering pot for the rich?
More like this...
"Wake up artists you stupid gits!” shouts Mark McGowan from his taxi cab in a recent video uploaded to his YouTube channel. “Stop painting fucking trees! [...] The only artists doing anything are the bloody young, the bloody misfits and the outsiders, while the rest of you are making posters for the fucking Olympics!”
It's one of many YouTube tirades, McGowan, a Peckham-born fine art grad from Camberwell College of Arts, has launched from the grey seat of his people-carrier under the 'Artist Taxi Driver' moniker. It's funny, it's accessible; it's also evocative and moving. It's everything art should be, yet it's everything that's missing from a lot of contemporary art these days – that Saatchi-groomed, commodified fluff that McGowan is ranting against.
What the hell is up with contemporary art? Does anyone even care? In the last few decades collectors and speculators have stuck multi-million-pound price tags on formaldehyde sharks and unmade beds transforming them instantly into a new kind of currency for the elite. Even 'specullector' and gallery owner Charles Saatchi is getting disillusioned. Just a couple of Fridays ago (December 2) the contemporary art guru – famous for the meteoric rise of the YBAs - launched an attack on the “vulgar, super-rich and depressingly shallow” contemporary art world in The Guardian.
“It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, Hedge-fundy, Hamptonites,” he said, “of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard.” And he said it all four days before the Turner Prize – the most prestigious contemporary art award in Europe - was announced at The Baltic Mill, Gateshead, to Glasgow School of Art alumnus Martin Boyce. For the judges, Boyce’s installation - an atmospheric collection of metalworks that take inspiration from trees and municipal parks; featuring dappled light from an aluminium canopy, a leaning litter bin, scattered paper leaves and a geometric desk - opened up a “new sense of poetry”.
But does anyone outside the establishment really give a shit? In hard times, high-brow art is hard to justify. Across the globe people are making grassroots art that is close to their hearts; from revolutionary graffiti in the Middle East to cultural renovation in Detroit. What can the Turner possibly add to this conversation? And if its art does try to carry a legit message, is that debased by its cosy connections with money and status?
Since its inception in 1984 (“to celebrate new developments in contemporary art”, the Turner has always caused controversy. In 1994 the prankster K Foundation even established a £40,000 Anti-Turner prize for ‘the worst artist in Britain’. But its ability to shock, and present objectors with an opportunity to publicly call shit on it, is absolutely its appeal. The current exhibition at the Baltic is likely to welcome 120,000 visitors through its door before it closes on January 8. There is an audience for this kind of art, and that’s a really exciting thing.
I love art. And I love difficult art; challenging pieces that force you to think and go beyond the boundaries of your own personal experience. As high-fashion celeb photographer Mario Testino put it when he presented the Turner Prize this year: “It's all the things that we don't necessarily think we like, or don't understand, that we should pay attention to; because they're usually the best.” Contemporary art is a space to explore these things. Much of it will fail, both aesthetically and conceptually, but it’s important that these artists take risks and push the boundaries of what art is or could be. Just as it is equally (even more) important that we celebrate more politically and socially charged art from around the world. But there is space for both and there is an audience for both.
Of course, when Turner Prize-winning artworks are deeply rooted in a greedy capitalist money-making system, they do risk losing any kind of significance. It’s difficult for these pieces to offer us new perspectives when they are pawns in a game of perceived value and style. Often, artists make Faustian pacts with their buyers in which the artworks themselves are almost redundant. Many collectors and dealers have no artistic nous at all - they are simply advised on ‘the next big thing’ and buy that name in abundance; like a stockholder shoring up best-bet shares and waiting for their pockets to swell.
But away from these cynical machinations, a conversation is happening. And that’s the radical thing. Yes the Turner should exist, yes we should champion contemporary art and yes we should absolutely rally against it when it's a pile of crap, or has dodgy wealth attached to it. Mark McGowan is right: “Wake up artists you stupid gits!” Because surely artists need to stay fresh, radical, controversial and challenging? If Turner Prize artists are a culturally homogenous bunch of in-kids, then it's brilliant that they are in the public eye so we can be critical of them. Let's not write off all contemporary art because some of it is completely arrogant and out of touch.
Personally, walking through the Nokia-sponsored Turner Prize exhibition this year, I shelved my suspicions and found a real celebration of creativity and craft. Sure, there are problems, but there is also a tradition to be proud of. That we still regard art so highly in the UK is testament to an engaged, colourful national consciousnesses. And in its best format - at a gallery like the Tate Modern, London, for example, which Miranda Sawyer calls “a public park under a roof” - contemporary art can be a great leveller. It brings all kinds of people together to appreciate, not purchase, culture.
We are all critics, and we don't have to be defined simply as consumers. If we can rescue contemporary art from the ridiculous market in which it exists, we have a really exciting and eye-opening genre for all kinds of people to enjoy.
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £21 (UK) / £44 (EU) / £59 (Rest of the World).
Wake up artists (text) by Shelley Lee Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Add Your Comment...
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.