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

Green Tilework in Live Flesh 2000

Imagine the great difficulty to find who did that! I vaguely remembered that it was an exhibition about South American artists a while ago Tate Liverpool... That's a good start I must admit. Ok Ok looking for keywords to google now: Wall, Flesh, Blood... hummm Little squares?

After a couple of hours, I finally found it: Adriana Varejão!

Once again, I regret that there were not many information displayed next to the artwork. If it is the first time you come to a gallery and you do not know anything about these things that surround you; there will be no way for you to get the message! Where is the context here?

Brazilian 1964–Folds 2 2003oil on canvas over aluminium, mounted to wood with oil-painted polyurethane240.7 x 230.2 x 40 cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Once upon a time, in 15OO to be exact, Europeans discover Brazil which will become a Portuguese colony until the 19th century. Racism, Slavery, assimilation, submission, massacres left many different scares in contemporary history and part of the contemporary Brazil economic success is due to this dark aspect of colonialism. Sugarcane massive industry was made profitable by the forced labour of African slaves.

But these are not things that people like to hear, specially if in some ways they feel directly or indirectly responsible.

Adriana Varejão art is made after 1970 but responds to the colonial history of Brazil. The typical ceramic mosaïcs exported to Brazil in provenance of the "old continent" (old as 'wiser'?) are a symbol of the assimilation and aculturation process.

Azulejaria 'De Tapete em Carne Viva'1999

They represent the 'viewable' surface of the Brazilian culture as if there were an official version of the history approved through a hegemonic force. Here is the vision of the colonialist power: a shiny, clean surface, that often recalls industrial aseptic tile walls, easily washable that participe to the fabric of Brazilian's society but hide an ugly truth.

Ruina de Charque - Nova Capela, 2003 Oil on wood and polyurethane

The artist may therefore propose the viewer to cut through the falsehood of history. She may also say that scares may be the only thing left if the industrial world was about to decline. I will leave that to you and encourage you to bring your personal views in a wise comment below.

Because we are not necessarily professional of contemporary art and because we do not know the artist personally in most of the cases, I suggest to all gallery owners to provide to your visitors a set of deep but accessible information! Thanks a lot...

For all of you who did not play with Legos when they were young or those who think that it is for kids only. There was an exhibition in Liverpool called Art Craziest Nation in january, that recreated a vision af the glamourous artworld, using the famous brick game.

Artist Mark Wallinger can be seen in the centre of the image above wearing a white shirt and black sunglasses. He is looking at Koons' Balls; in the background part of Kleins' Sponges can be seen.

Here are some examples that I chose because I had the occasion to mention these people or artworks earlier in the blog:

Featured artworks
Hirst's Shark Tank Whiteread's Room Chapmans' Dead Guys Emin's Bed Warhol's Money Klein's Sponges

Featured artists
Damien Hirst Dinos and Jake Chapman Tracey Emin Rachael Whiteread Matthew Barney Mark Wallinger
Artworld luminaries and special guests
Larry Gagosian

The group is called 'Little Artists' to explore "what it means to be an artist in the current super-branded cultural climate" in their own words. More information is still available on the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool @:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/littleartists/

The result? A huge panic! People packing and leaving massively the cities, numerous phone calls to the police from scared people reporting martian attacks, explosions... A great experimentation indeed!

Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade II

Gursky's world of the 1990s is big, high-tech, fast-paced, expensive, and global. Within it, the anonymous individual is but one among many. Gursky's work draws a picture of our multicultural society from a specific angle, stressing the geometric beauty of the social interactions, of the world we shape. A cult of the anonymous. Another artist whose approach is similar in the sense that he points at the role of the individual among the mass, Spencer Tunick takes photos since 1992 of a mass he controls. By photographing a hundred or more of naked bodies in public spaces, he challenges and questions social, political and justice conventions (he is regularly arrested for photographing his naked models in public spaces). the result is a delicious aesthetic provocation in a strange, unusual manner in my opinion.

Melbourne 2 - Spencer Tunick 2001

More recently, Antony Gormley proposed an interesting project (in the sense of using the crowd as a medium) for Trafalgar square in London. There, is an free place for you, artist, to expose your artwork (after a small contest between shortlisted contemporary artists) which already introduced Wallinger's Ecce Homo for example... Gormley proposed to allow people to be the artwork, one by one, for one complete hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...

A last example is the appearance of the Chapman brothers on a reality show here in Britain. To quote the Guardian who covered the subject: "It's frightening to think what Jake and Dinos might do to the housemates. Tie them up and watch them have sex with blow-up dolls? Make them act out some nihilistic performance involving Hitler, Ronald McDonald and nursery-rhyme characters? Force them to make toy panoramas of war, cannibalism and the apocalypse? The art world waits with baited breath". Let see what they planned for the TV crowd, it's currently on air.

I guess they may be inspired by the Czech arts collective Ztohoven, who hacked a cam used for the weather forecast in a TV news program. They inserted this apocalyptic image of an atomic explosion, which resulted to a Welles-like nightmare (Station phone calls, Heart attacks...) with the artists facing the possibility of three years in jail.

In Conclusion, there is no excuse in the contemporary context of the art, for you not to be an artwork! But remember that you, and only you are the crowd!

Because Berlin loves Bears... You can find thousands of them, both in very official places and in some of the oddest corners of the city. Among many of them, reappropriated by artists, advertisers and therefore tourists, the black bear on Berlin's flag is the one that conclusively binds the animal with it's cultural identity.

Walk along Unter den Linden and try to define a taxonomy of the many "by-products" which shows the bear in countless funny situations... Mugs, T-shirts, pens, postcards... Bring something from Berlin? Bring a bear! So, what would be the ultimate tourist experience if not getting transformed into a bear?

In fact, and although sleeper's footage is currently exhibited at Tate Liverpool, this is not this artwork that the Turner Prize jury awarded. The winner project is called State Britain and recreates the peace campaigner Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square. You probably saw it if you visited London and therefore Big-Ben, two steps away from Brian Haw's camp. Precise in every details, from the tea-making area to the numerous banners, flags, photographs and posters, Wallinger apparently hired 14 people for six months to source the materials and carefully weather and age them to a state of complete authenticity.

Can you see the black tape line drawn on the Tate gallery's floor, behind the artist? It appears that this line defines exactly the actual zone of exclusion drawn in May 23 2006 following the passing by parliament of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act that forbade unauthorised demonstrations within a kilometre of Parliament Square!

The artwork stands exactly on this line... How clever... Therefore, it becomes 'outlaw' but culturally approved by the government and therefore untouchable, which brings back to life the Brian Haw tools for protestation. Moreover, it attracts the attention of the media and demonstrates how art and language can be powerful!

• 50% Funky Soul Baby
• 42% Groovy for sure
• 7% Not the type of artwork I d hang on my living room wall
• 0% Rather listening to Enya

I am glad you like it!!! Something tells me that we will have to come back to Murakami quite regularly regarding to his actuality!!!