"If you can say it... Why paint it?" A review of the key concepts of Contemporary Art

Is the grass always greener in your neighbour's garden? Many of you may have experienced living abroad for short or longer journey... It is always interesting to see yourself in another framework. You get used to some of the things you may find there (In my case, here in the UK, a few things come to my mind such as the tiny skirts and hum... let me think about it...) and some you will never get used to.

There is something that I still can't cope with here... I tried really hard, I promise! But I can't get over it: The open curtains.

Let me explain... For me, the concept 'home' is deeply linked with this other concept called 'privacy', or 'retreat' and I can tell you that I have great difficulties not to stop to watch what happens in these thousand houses I pass everyday when I am on the way to work.

People laying on their bed or sofa watching TV, having a can of beer, getting prepared for the party... They would be French I wouldn't care. But they are not and I want to know everything about them in the 2 1/2 seconds allowed by the social communitarian rules that would lead the police to my house for 'weird act of voyeurism' if I'd be watching for too long. So instead of leading a digital SLR raid at night to frame these people, I prefer going into an art gallery!

Sometimes Preston homes ring a Richard Billingham's bell in my mind... Do you know him? He was shortlisted for the Turner prize in 2001 but shined among the YBA's (Young British Artists is a group promoted by Saatchi that appeared on the contemporary art scene in a really famous exhibition called 'sensation' that promoted new stars such as Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin, The Chapman Brothers and many others...).

When discovered, Richard Billingham was seen as a poor child of the Midlands who came over a dramatic familial mediocrity through the use of a camera. His mother, Liz, tattooed and obese; his father, Ray, alcoholic and his brother, Jason who is a drug addict... The pictures are usually untitled and are talking about the artist roots; a family album and certainly not related to any political critique or anything like that.

I mentioned it earlier in this blog but I think that, no matter the subject you cover through your artwork, it has to address the network of social relationship that compose the contemporary art world. In this particular case I think Billingham allow gallerists, curators, critics [...] visitors to access to a world that they would not see otherwise. In the particular setting of the gallery, it is highly recommended to stay in front of these 'windows' opened by Richard's camera... highly fashionable indeed. No worries, the police this time won't come to knock on your door; this is institutionally authorized voyeurism!

Who cares about these middle class people? I mean the ones who got a job, one or two kids and a mortgage? I just imagine in 2o years time when the economical, social and cultural centre of gravity will definitely be set between China and India... Would Chinese artists come to the old Europe to take pictures of the last middle class families as we do now with the first middle class Chinese families?

So... from our perspective, Billingham's pictures are fantastic...right? But when it came to produce a second serie of photographs, the artist who was obviously the centre of the press and critics attention, failed to hit his target a second time... He chose to picture the city area he came from. Pretty pictures that did not work...

The art world has a thousand of similar tales to tell. Looking at one of the last issues of PHOTO magazine, I was amazed by a serie of pictures taken by jessica Dimmock. Taken on the apartment at 4 W. 22nd St, NYC. Drug addiction, violence, love, sex, friendship, poverty...

"The images that garnered Dimmock her F Award, as well as and Inge Morath Prize and PDN's Marty Forscher Fellowship Fund, are compassionate yet disturbing portraits of lives stifled and consumed by addiction" says the other blog... As a European, 25 man potentially middle class, passionated with photography and visual arts in general... with no drugs addiction nor major problems in life... I agree.