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

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.

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!!! ;-))