H O M E E X H I B I T I O N S G A L L E R Y M A N I F E S T O A R T  T H E O R Y L I N K S

BRIT ART THE BRITISH NUDE ON THE VERGE OF A BREAKDOWN THE POPULIST CULTURE In the 1970’s, the purist tendencies from Post - Painterly Abstraction to Minimalism came to be seen as the last stage of Modernism. The art object gave way to the concept of the ‘art work’. The ideas of ‘progress’ in art, forward - looking ‘movements’ and ‘Art for Art’s sake’ have been questioned. Modernism was opposed for favouring purity, the artist as original, the art work as unique and for being historicist and elitist. Post - Modernism undermined all this as well as the notions of the art work being self - contained and self - sufficient. It is considered as a global phenomenon, spreading to all fields of our lives as opposed to Modernism that was considered Western and Eurocentric. Conceptualism dominated this (‘non’) movement . It attacked the existing ontology and epistemology of art: what was considered as art and art’s relation to knowledge. In the 1990’s we witnessed a continuation of this, except that now, the barriers between ‘high’ art and populist, pop culture are weakened. The ‘real’, found object of the everyday is more valid than the traditionally aestheticized. Messed up beds, tents and piles of cardboard and paper are now considered as ‘art works’. This is bringing back the old debate between ‘high’ (modernist) and ‘low’ (post-modernist) art. The 1990’s have seen political challenging and questioning the roles of the social and art institutions. M. Duchamp brought the ‘low’ cubical Mr. Mutt to the ‘high’ environment of the gallery in order to undermine the aesthetic values that were traditionally expected of works of art. The very same values are however now searched and found in the same cubical(!). It was defended that ‘Mr. Mutt’ took an ordinary article of life, placed it that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object. However, acknowledging the significance of ready-made objects as ‘art’ rests not in any aesthetic qualities that may be discovered in them, but crucially, in the aesthetic questions they force one to contemplate. After the ‘crises in representation’ of the 1980’s, there was a ‘DIY show’ phenomena in Britain as a result of the existence of dealers like C. Saatchi and art institutions like Goldsmiths. A new scene started to emerge populated by the graduates of an art system that overproduced ‘well-educated’ artists. As a result of this as well as the fact that the recession was felt, artists / students started taking over the curatorial activities, as well as promoting themselves and importantly, introducing1 the ideas of exhibition alternative spaces rather than the white walls of the galleries. Shows like ‘Freeze’ (1988) introduced a new way of interaction between the audience and the art work. The birth of New British Art promoted the practising of ‘new forms of competence and skill’.2 John Roberts in ‘Occupational Hazard’, notes the integration of art into the sphere of film, video, media and design. This is seen as socialisation of art, or rather, social integration of art. If art is the reflection and cognition of life, this is an alarming factor for the fact that graphic design, illustration, advertisement, doodles etc. is all considered as ‘art’ reflects the moral, social and political values that currently reign in this post-modern vortex. The issue of autonomy is at stake. Art with a capital “A” is replaced by popular culture with small “pc”. Pop art in this sense is successful for its reading practice confirms to the reading practice of the ‘everyday’, populist spectator that takes whatever they need from a text or object at will, whereas the modernist spectator attempts to read the aesthetic object on its own terms. So, how much aesthetic autonomy should a work of art have? According to the present climate of NBA, none (?!). Any promotion of aesthetic autonomy is seen as a “corrupt” profesionalisation of art. What are we left with? A concept. Is that a sufficient component to carry the weight of the notion of ‘work of art’? What is considered as a positive aspect in some of the NBA is that its main objective is to disrupt the hierarchy within art institutions. This can lead though toward a dangerous path where ‘dissonance is confused with dissidence’3. The artist actually promotes the process of democratisation of art at the expense of disrupting the quality of it, although this connotes the de - mythologisation and dis - identification of the artist as an outsider or something higher than society. For Roberts the artwork does not lose its formal integrity when it undergoes the process of technological enculturalisation which lead to a popular and ‘non-specialist’ dialogue about what the artist does. The fact is though that the artists main means of communication is through the media that is shaped by the technological distribution of their art. This can lead the artists to the regressive direction of re - mythologisation of themselves and thus finding that they are back where they started. In other words, the danger lies in the establishing of a canonical status within high culture, the very thing they set themselves the task to destroy. In some odd way (form a greater distance) and paradoxically, this factor in NBA can be seen as a success, for it reflects in itself a concern with the relations of art’s distributions. Its level of distribution and recognition is now outside the professional art audience and is judged by non - specialist audience as being a matter of a shared, ordinary culture. Does this mean then, that the mere ‘hype’ of the media can become the substance of the artwork? One difficulty of Post - Modernsim is that in its overemphases of the everyday and over-investment in the potential of the low to a large extent, it ceases to secure a critical position for the mundane. In artworks that do contain aesthetic values as they are resting on metaphysical ‘narratives’, as in the works of A. Gormley or D. Hirst, we are faced with universal notions of life, death, continuity transcending certain social and cultural issues. Harris argues that those are attended in a superficial manner. Harris, referring to Hirst’s work proposes that: “...it remains to be proved what his work reveals of death other than its idle referencing”4. This also suggests that it has become too easy to ‘read’ the works of art. Theory and practice have come too close to eachother and no effort is needed to ‘illustrate’ theory, for this ‘illustrating’ can even be the actual text. This is a continuation of Pop - art with its dependence on language, photography and adverts. To an argument that it would be difficult to find a modernist or classical work of art that does not connote mere ‘reference’, one just thinks of the ‘Mona Lisa’ where one does see beyond the likeness of this woman and is confronted with infinite mystery of life and death. A deep engagement takes place One is genuinely perplexed and provoked. This ‘Mona Lisa’ effect takes the viewer way beyond idle referencing. CHAPTER II EDUCATIONAL ISSUES AND THE ROLE OF ART INSTITUTIONS Peter Suchin in Occupational Hazard, points that art education does not actually succeed in intergrating the artist into society by impregnating it with theory. The 19th Century image of the artist as an esoteric eccentric outsider is still prevalent in British culture. In the art schools today, a contempt against art theory can be noted. It is considered that theory is a restraint against self - expression. According to Suchin, democratisation of higher education has been at the cost of lowering the standards with respect to the actual talent and abilities of applicants on their interviews for the degree courses.5 Indeed, technical skills are not promoted any longer in art schools and as Matthew Collins notes: “It’s true that life drawing in art school is more or less out now. You could easily go through your art school years today without doing one. But it’s not true that you would actually be encouraged to never do one, or punished if you secretly did one.” 6 This is a cause for an alarm for the art student that “just” paints. A painting does not function immediately and is not “new”. Have we all forgotten what a painting is - and that it demands time - that it cannot be “now”? Suchin calls for art organisations whose practice is curatorialy well informed with an ‘acute awareness of the demands involved in presenting work within the public domain’7. He concludes that the British art’s hyped sense of novelty and originality is the result of the lack of critical distance between the orthodox and alternative theories. The current atmosphere discourages analyses, or as S. Craddock puts it in ‘Art and Text’( issue 49, 1994, p.58), ‘To have an ‘overview’ is to ‘judge’, and judgement similarly carries the inadvisable arrogance of common denominator. Post-history drags judgement into the experience of individual encounter, and away from intangibility. She points - and rightly so - to the superficial attempts by New British Artists to make art socially or politically concerned. ‘To “deal with” or “in” subjects is not necessarily political at all’8. Cradock wants to know if this ‘mundane-favourite word-and the banal-an even more favourite word’ attitude needs to be repeated so often. There is not enough discernment within the art history and academic circles in Britain as a result of the rationalising process which attributes to the development of technology and science, and the progress of late capitalism, a bureaucratic, managerial type of culture characterised by mass consumption and economic self - seeking. It is not surprising then when this kind of society produces the “A’La -the- emperors-new-clothes” type of ‘artists’ that lay bricks, make tents, mess-up beds and cut sheep. For Suchin the success of artist - led organisations does not mean this is an artistic success and overall, British Art is engulfed with a cloud of exaggerated importance. For him, future critics will describe Contemporary British Art as ‘a frenzy over an immense spectacle, a vast but transient distraction’.9 As for the role of the museums, it can be said that their changing role could be a progressive step, for it educates the public - as is the case with the New Tate Modern where the galleries inside it are themed. Whilst being in danger of presenting a curatorial stew, this attempt of making art more accessible to the popular public may be credited because it at least tries to bring the public closer to art instead of “dumbing down” art itself. A factor worth mentioning in relation to the popularity of NBA is the new tax laws that were introduced during the Thacher era. This encouraged banks and corporate companies to invest in exhibitions (inregardless of the venue) and appease the tax man. This is “cultural imperialism” at its peak. It all adds up to the build up of corporate identities within Great Britain. The myth that the media has built around the NBA movement and the mentality of consumer culture reflects an indirect success. As Damien Hirst admits himself: ‘If you can ‘do’ the art world at 32, it means that there is something wrong with the art world, not that you are a genius’10. BACK   FORWARD