Wednesday, May 28, 2008
I'd like to focus on a point of the debate related to the way the initial article was written in the Art Newspaper because I believe it is relevant to explore the way cultural differences affect the contemporary art world in general.
9.5.08 Jonathan San Francisco
How many of us felt the same in front of an art-related text, an introduction to a specific artist or an exhibition book/review? To be honest, if you do your first steps in the contemporary art world, it sounds like a foreign language!
To this first comment, a second writer adds:
What the writer is obscuring with his "art-speak" is that the videos featured animals being battered to death, in some cases by the artist, in the name of art. I saw the exhibit and was sickened and I've worked in hospitals all my life. What I saw when the exhibit was pulled was a demand, if you will, for ethical, humanistic and humane values rather than an "anything goes in the name of building my career." If the video had shown the torture of humans done as an art form there would have been no mistaking its brutality. I realize that most of us eat meat and that animals are usually not killed in a humane way but this exhibit wasn't about that. It was about promoting a career by using gruesome and controversial imagery.
Eventually, a third writer, visibly more concerned by what happens in the contemporary art sphere, writes:
9.5.08 Nancy San Francisco, CA
My 2¢ in response to the previous comments. Firstly, what is "art-speak"? When I hear someone use that term it always feels as though they are simply trying to dismiss the argument. This is a venue for art writing and sometimes complex and nuanced ideas require like language. Do we deride economists, carpenters or anyone that has a vernacular/vocabulary/language that we have trouble deciphering?
[...] I also wonder if Nacy's analysis that the artist is "promoting a career by using gruesome and controversial imagery" is based on an understanding of the work in context of his entire body of work/career, or simply on a knee jerk reaction and subjective view of contemporary art and artists.
9.5.08 josh Oakland
This actually makes a point here, the 'knee-jerk reference was obviously not compulsory but demonstrates a certain passion in the debate...! "This is a venue for art writing and sometimes complex and nuanced ideas require like language. Do we deride economists, carpenters or anyone that has a vernacular/vocabulary/language that we have trouble deciphering?" is a wise comment but...If you are a regular reader of these blog lines, or if you have a foot into contemporary art world as a hobby or as professional, you've probably acknowledge all the postmodernist theoretical background and would probably agree with this third writer. However a contradiction lays just there:
On the first hand, contemporary art is over mediatised and becomes increasingly popular. If not in a art-specific media, contemporary art is often introduced to the mass culture through the celebrities who bought or sold famous artworks, big amounts of cash exchanged and sometimes glittering cocktails and parties to celebrate prizes.
On the second hand, rich of a solid theoretical background and a more and more complex history of the Art and the interactions between sub-genres; contemporary art becomes less and less accessible to the newcomer but more and more interesting in my opinion although i agree that we can find the best, the worst and too often... the worst.
This is not just about the words to describe it! This is way more than just this! I am talking about visual vocabulary, the visual semantic rules and cultural history associated; the postmodernist grammar and conjugation system, which binds the artist, artworks and viewers altogether to create meaning with a unique sense of the tenses dialectic...
Therefore, how come a newcomer who never really learned this foreign language could possibly understand such complex artworks as Jim Beam JB Turner Train from Jeff Koons? Try to explain to a newcomer that this stainless steel train, filled with Bourbon is a masterpiece and talks about class, power and the contemporary art market?
Jim Beam JB Turner Train from Jeff KoonsThis definitely is a first step, although I hate when interactivity becomes compulsory in a growing number of museums...
The key lays therefore in the education process... When would we see a fully recognised picture analysis as an exam for the GCSE, baccalaureate or any equivalent?
Thursday, May 22, 2008
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
Oscar Wilde
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The artist is apparently French with North African origins (it is somehow relevant, u ll see...) and the artwork is a movie made in a Mexican slaughter house... Showing animals being slaughtered and was apparently misinterpreted by a part of the audience that saw there a kind of 'Animal Snuff Movie' realised for the sake of Art. We can't really blame them, can we? I've mentioned earlier in this blog that the art world is not being tender at the moment with projects of people dying in Art galleries for the "show" (I m not discussing these artworks here... this is a whole other debate), the story of this student with her performance art piece in which she artificially inseminated herself repeatedly and then self-aborted for the sake of art, then Guillermo Habacuc Vargas who chained a dog and left it in the gallery without food for the sake of art... It is all disturbing isn't it???
This all sound really crazy to me, however I must say my opinion is a bit biased as I belong of a specific group of people recently mediatised because of its leader actions and PR operations, and girlfriends... We became notorious in the past as some of our traditions are usually perceived as foolish: eating cow tongues and snails, being really arrogant, protesting for everything and demonstrating all the time. We are known as the French people.
My opinion is biased because there are some of the things out there I take for granted (snails are really good... yes, they really are!), some I do not understand (when I say that in France, in soap advertisements, girls appear entirely naked under the shower and, I do not understand why you think this is pervert...) and some things, my people do not accept (Chinese people eat puppies and rotten duck eggs!!).
I do not say I am any better than you, I just say that I am different... I am just French! But look, I am not only French, I went to university, come from a village, a Polish family with a catholic background... and finally I am really into contemporary art things for years... It makes things easier for me to accept or understand as it is part of my culture. In fact, we all are singular individuals, who belong to groups which belong to larger groups. Therefore, when I go to see an exhibition about Chapman Brothers artworks (notorious for being particularly controversial...), I am not really shocked. Does it mean that it would be stupid of you to be shocked there?
Some ideas could be dangerous when exported in other social groups. We have recently seen conflicts exploding all around the world because of a couple of Mahomet's drawings. What kind of conclusion could emerge from this?
Coming back to our slaughter house example, it appears as I mentioned previously, that a group of people believed that the animals were killed on purpose, for the sake of the video. It led to blackmail, dangerous anonymous threats...etc. Who is responsible?
I believe that, as in every communication process, that meaning is built both by the emitter (here the curators) and the receivers (audience). Therefore, the information about the artwork was probably lacking... This is an old habit, tradition for galleries to keep a mystery around the artworks. It is part of the art culture, usually justified by the fact that every viewer must be able to enrich the artworks by building a personal relationship with the piece of art, as many different opinions as different viewers who enter in the gallery; different meanings to be shared, to generate a result that is more powerful than the simple sum of every individually built meanings!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
High and low society, memorials and the story of the 50 meters high horse in Kent!!!
0 comments Posted by seiinod at 9:54 PMDefining whether a work of art is ‘original’ or not may depend on a stereotyped definition of originality for social coherence needs, and may thus be unresponsive to the work of those who challenge the authority of that tradition and that stereotype.
Rachel Whiterhead (see previous post here)- Memorial - JudenPlatz - Vienna
I would like to explore briefly another problem, which may lie under all this: When it comes to 'public' art.
On the one hand, there is an art world that tries to place massive art works everywhere in the UK (Shall we really complain? It s definitely a matter of point of view when it comes to pay the local taxes); on the second hand, people's desires are not necessarily fulfilled with the authorities responses... What I am just about to say may sounds like a cheap advice but I think it's worth to say it: Authorities should take account of the gap that stands between the art world culture and the people's culture!
In a previous post entitled "The contemporary art world in 2008", I introduced the potential modification of the business etiquette within the contemporary art world in 2008, due to the growing importance of the Asian markets... In parallel, for my uni final work, I introduced the hypothesis that a 'contemporary art' culture of communication may exist, largely influenced by the top end buyers who benefit from a great media coverage and therefore could be influential for minorities within the art market. A culture mainly U.S. and Europe oriented at the moment, but just about to change drastically.
Christian Boltanski
Jüdisches Museum - Berlin
To be more precise, I've demonstrated that according to the international sales figures blended with scores associated with each countries for the cultural characteristics, that the dominant western art market tends to give little chance to artists and enterprises to move among genres, but also that no importance is accorded to these new genres unless there are values of prestige associated. In other terms it does hardly give a chance to new emerging movements, especially if those movements do not emerge from the major cultural actors of the International art market.
That is for the market culture... but what about the people's culture, which probably has nothing to do with this international financial/cultural battleground? Reading this last paragraph again makes me think that the art world would not give a damn about the people anyway!
Do you take account of the people's culture when you commission an 'angel of the south' in Kent? The fourth plinth on Trafalgar square that traditionally supports contemporary artworks? Hardly... Yes in fact but it tends to be kept hush...
John Tusa for an article in Guardian Arts Blog entitled "Art in public spaces should be decided by the people" proposes a series of questions to improve the communication process between the Commissioners and the Public:
Is the work to be a sculpture or an installation? Is it for an existing community with an existing identity, or a new community whose identity can be influenced by the commission? Is it to be permanent or temporary? If temporary, what follows? Is the commission primarily a sop to a developers' conscience, a blatant attempt to gloss over a basically mediocre development? How is the community to be involved? How is the artist involved? What is the process for choosing a short list of artists for the commission - if this is the route chosen? And finally, who chooses the actual commission?
Model for a hotel - Thomas Schütte - Photo by Orange Mac
This question can become really tricky when it comes to commission a memorial artwork. Why would we commission an artwork for a memorial by the way? Probably because in some cases, words and pictures are not enough to communicate things as 'heavy' on consciousness as holocaust, wars or genocides... There I come back to the first post of this blog, last November that introduced my vision of what a great contemporary artwork is: a way to express an idea, to reach the full-range of human feelings when words or traditional media becomes powerless.
I invite you to visit the Guardian website to have a clear view on what projects are currently competing to become Ebbsfleet Landmark (Kent). Finally, my preference would definitely go to Mark Wallinger's project... (see previous post about Mark Wallinger)
Photograph: Ebbsfleet Landmark Project Ltd
Why? Although I am deeply in love with Rachel Whitehead's work I cannot avoid to dream about my daughter at the back of the car, a spark in the eye, just thinking that in a couple of miles she will see the sculpture of a giant horse!!! ;-))
Monday, May 5, 2008
Artwork of the month - May 2008 - 'Lock' by Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL
0 comments Posted by seiinod at 2:23 PM
Lock is a term borrowed from the snipers lexical field, which means that the target is ready to be killed. Helped with a laser pointer, Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL simulates a situation where civil targets caught in the line of fire of an undefined threat in Paris streets.
I'll ask again... Won't you take me home? Instead of this simulacra of modern urban unfair warfare? You all have in mind photos of Sarajevo, victims of Snipers. Let me refresh your memory. The media used to be flooded of such pictures at that time. But this was far away, so far that people could not even point at Sarajevo on a map. And the media did not help: Who really knows what happened there? But let's just come back to our artwork... 
I was just saying: What I dislike about this artwork, me, Conflict, is that it helps people to think about what would happen if I had to come to your door... A simulation... As if people were attacked in your peaceful parks, streets and playgrounds. In 'lock', the threat is viewable, the tragedy is imminent; did not yet happen though, but is just about to happen. The potentiality of death is not only a newspaper thing anymore. And YOU now think about it, maybe as you could be the victim of this sniper that points his red eye on your shoulder or on your back.
Why is it different from what you see on your TV screen? 
This is a terrific shot taken a few seconds after Benazir Bhutto assassination in Pakistan by John Moore. This picture is part of a series that won the first prize at the World Press Photography 2008. You can see it is real by the way the photo was taken... You expect such picture from a journalist, don't you? That is exactly the aesthetic that would boost the TIMES/Guardians sales, when framed on the front page. A guy praising at the sky in the middle of the carnage, smoke, calcined corpses and blood everywhere around... This Muslim really looks like Jesus Christ?! The perfect white European archetype of sacrifice and suffering... A model that applies everywhere?
From the exact same series, I find this one far more interesting... This is a bit more unexpected. It was taken while the bombs were exploding and it really gives a sense of immediacy. But that is a question of taste.
Ok, one more time: My name is conflict, do you take me home? an idea of me? or am I just a far, remote, unrealistic fantasy that does not have much to do with proper truth and reality?
For allowing the viewer to question all these problematics, I say 'Lock' by Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL... Artwork of the month.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
