Contemporary Art – A Reason to Embrace

Dear Contemporary-Art-Phobe, this series is for you. As well as on a critical or cynical day in my life, it is a challenge unto myself…

I’ve made it my part-time pursuit in my solo year at art school, (where they birth and nurture contemporary fine artists and designers), to become accustomed, acquainted and maybe even aligned with contemporary art. With so much exposure to it, it’s been a welcomed task. I’ve allowed myself, in the past, to be angered by contemporary art, and then be washed away with the anti-tide, and the repetitive lapping waves of ‘but it’s not art is it,’ most often led by individuals who know little about art anyway. I think a name like Philippa would have suited me – Phil the Greek for lover – I genuinely don’t like disliking. And no that’s not a double negative for you there! So I’ve been gathering thought-provoking arguments from qualified individuals that justify that which I’ve previously thought was unjustifiable.

In terms of traditional measures of taste – of quality, craftsmanship and beauty, I think quite a collection of people see contemporary art as the fall of art. The fall – the point at which evil entered the world, and it could be reversed. A new and forceful genre of art has influenced (positively or negatively) so many, that the public, and aspiring artists cannot help but be changed by it. They see art differently.

Art Historian Johann Joachim Winkelmann (18^th century) believed the pinnacle of artistic achievement was the antiquity (approx. 800 BC – 600 AD), and this has at moments been a comfortable line to follow. “[There] is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled, by imitating the ancients…It is not only nature which the votaries of the Greeks find in their works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties, brain born images.” This is when I see an image of a graph of limiting factors – a dropping curve – with an example such as primitive art, of the modern variety, which is not dissimilar to primitive art of the pre-historic cave art variety. Has there really been a climax that was followed by a regression to pre-enlightenment days? Or because appearances-can-be-deceptive, the contemporary primitives in fact do have skills and knowledge and ability superior of that before, and so it is a question of utilising potential and to a decided intellectual affect.

For this collection of thoughts, I’m going to put aside capitalist ideas of better and worse, and see where believing in contemporary art takes me…

Decisions

I remember writing in my blog Rubbish: “Artists, it seems to me, are either very sure characters or very broken characters.” On this matter, I’ve realised that to be an artist you can’t be indecisive. To dilute completely, creating art is purely a process of [creative] decisions. Many of these choices are too insignificant for the viewer to note, but each decision of colour, tone, intensity and quantity of application etc. builds a unified impact. It is the act of decision-making - of shaping his or her own journey - that enthrals the artist with their work.

The concentration necessary to do so is not in order to imitate (if they wish to), but to decide how it is that they can imitate, step-by-step. If I reference this to literature – in this blog I am constantly deciding which word to write next. In certain places, I appear to have little choice, little spectrum for creativity because I am limited by my ties to ‘sense’. My aim is to make sense, but more than this, I decide to write in a way that is more elaborate, decorative, and phonaestically pleasing, thus cohesive as well as coherent. For example ‘elaborate’ – an adjective with many synonyms - is a much larger decision I have made.

Decision are what gives the creator, the artist, power. It is what connects so closely the creator with his creation because no creator will make the same sequence of decisions. My tutor predicted that on a busy day in the studio, we would make around a hundred decisions about our work; and this is why Juan Gris said, “You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.”

The sculptor Giacometti said, “There are too many sculptures between my model and me,” which expresses exactly why decisions are what tires an artist out. Conscious work is full of them. And it drains. It is no wonder to me now why the surrealists delved into the unconscious, the sub-conscious, because they wanted to see where art leads if it has a paucity of, or if null of choices. Does that make the work even more a visual embodiment of the creator, or does it make it less so? The surrealist would probably discuss the quality of the outcome, saying something along the lines that while conscious art knowingly mimics its creator; it mirrors the image the creator wishes to reflect. Whereas the unconscious is truthful to the mind of its creator. Not true to reality (is this really possible in art?), but true to the composed, exposed and unexposed thoughts of its maker.

Image:

‘Automatic Drawing’ by Andre Masson, 1924.

In Search of the Perfect Figure

Now this was never an intentional or the definitive hunt, however when I raided London earlier this week, I couldn’t help but check out the perfect figures I found on W1’s streets. For women such Jenny Saville and I (perhaps for other reasons;) never seem to be satisfied in their quests to find beauty in their natural forms. Acclaimed artists such as Jenny Saville, Sir Anthony Caro and others, are presently exhibiting in house-galleries off-the-museum-beaten-track around New Bond Street.

In this setting, Saville’s talent in proudly shown off, where it is not over talked, but the beauty of her ability to capture the human form is voiced with perfect clarity and umph. The pleasure is found in unearthing her there in Davies Street, and in discovering a new character and certain confidence in her drawings. Even the art novice, knows and recognises the beefy bulges and significant strokes of flesh in Jenny’s brash, brazen paintings - They are physically established, expressive, but static paintings. Her drawings from the ‘Reproduction’ series are a different matter. They still have evidence of the power of the artist’s hands, and they are still busy with visual activity – but the drawings buzz. They buzz with movement, with translucent layers of process.

These drawings wholly convinced me of her great skill with the contours of the body, that which she describes as “essential…having flesh as a central subject, I can channel a lot of ideas.” Drawings have the power to expose artists and their reliance on trial and error. Saville’s work is intuitive naked talent, so evident in slick composition and faultless animate mark making. Each part of the mother, and the child’s body is undeniably correct as well as beautiful.

For a different reason Ilona Szalay’s painting series ‘Naked’ is beautiful: her broad ranging and incredibly exciting technique. She uses paint to experiment with the human form. The paint bleeds beyond the control of the Saville’s graphic contours. Yet the figures do not dissolve into nothing, they are powerfully present. There is energy almost comparable to Cecily Brown. There are marks made, and then there are marks that have made themselves. This is perhaps most beautiful in the right breast of Nude in Profile (image above), where the mid, light and dark tones have helplessly bled into one very deliberate form.

Images:

Nude in Profile by Ilona Szalay

Reproduction I by Jenny Saville

Until May 15, Jenny Saville’s ‘Reproduction Drawings’ is at the Gagosian Gallery http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-04-15_jenny-saville/

Ilona Szalay’s work stays until 14 May at Whitfield Fine Art Gallery. http://www.whitfieldfineart.com/WHITFIELD_FINE_ART/Ilona_Szalay.html

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at The Barbican

If I told you that, on Wednesday I watched a bird play a Gibson les Paul, would you think me sincere? And if you did think me truthful, would you conclude that I was at an art exhibition, or like I did, assume it was a computer stimulated April fools from Bill Oddie.

This is the real life surrealism of contemporary instillation art.

We waited for longer than I’ve ever queued for an exhibition, during the mid-afternoon of a Wednesday during the Easter Holidays. Ambling slowly closer to the metal chain curtain I had no idea what to expect behind it. I’d read about birds ‘creat[ing] a random and captivating soundscape’, but to be honest, in disbelief and over art-education, I almost thought this was solely metaphorical, and certainly not ‘live’. I had seen teens appear from behind the curtain anxiously checking each other for signs of debris, whether it be feathers or excretion (neither which they had acquired.)

It wasn’t like an aviary at all. Despite being populated with zebra finches, which outnumbered the specified twenty-five visitors, this exhibition space felt like an exhibition (…perhaps I’m just getting more used to this experimental stuff). It was like any other exhibition, in that you stood and carefully observed art. You stood and looked, and waited until you thought you’d seen enough. What was different however was that this performance art had strayed from the individual waiting to find meaning to it, instead, the individual waited to be sufficiently entertained. This was experiential art. Yet it seems to be that the artist cared not so severely about how it makes you feel, but how the art sounded.

Once you realised that the poor fist-sized creatures weren’t going to be electrified, and yes they were being fed and watered, there was little shock to the concept. The experience was just surprisingly. Initially even enigmatic. It was a particularly enchanting experience watching these tiny birds form nests around the volume controls of the basses, or even in my bag (-the real need for a cloakroom in an art gallery.) I had become Mother Hen.

So what did I get out of this exhibition? That I’m not exactly sure. I’ve got bored of questioning the qualifications of an artwork. I can’t even seem to be able to analysis this exhibition in the same way I would every other exhibition…It was the most extraordinary exhibition I have ever been to.

A must see – open in the exhibition space: The Curve at the Barbican Centre until 23 May

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=9713

Language brings art alive

It has become apparent to me that regularly language used to analysis art is in fact a form of personification of art. A collection of sculptures I saw this weekend in ‘Sculpture Promenade 2010’ were said to 'interact', ‘offer’, ‘articulate[s] itself’, ‘reek[s]’, ‘allude[s] to’, ‘examine’, and 'dialogue.' This isn’t a wholly new concept - to use language to give art a life. This metaphorical analysis of art goes way back- as I referred to in the blog Beauty is a Woman. Allegorical uses to describe the character of art have been common throughout art history. It seems logical when we consider that all it is, is relating our human selves to a practice, to which we have made more human. Nick Turvey, a sculptor featured in ‘Sculpture Promenade’ said that art “reveal[s] the overwhelming nature of our desire to see ourselves reflected in the world around us.” Are we relying on language to make art alive? And for people to engage in modern art?

Let me exemplify with Two, currently exhibited outside the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge, as part of 'Sculpture Promenade.' Stood in front of it, I discussed with two others the possible meanings of it, possible intentions of it, and possible reactions it is aiming to provoke. Two, much like a lot of contemporary public sculptors such as that by Anish Kapoor, “are conceived and fashioned in ways that respond to changes in light, weather and the seasons; here the effects of exposure to the elements are welcomed as part of the works’ dynamic and evolving character.” This sculpture's surface is mirror-polished stainless steel and so its effect is reflective. Physically and otherwise. And here we go again - I have birthed out of a dead sculpture a life - a talking, thinking being - through imaginative use of language.

Stood there, we were discussing ambiguity - a topic inescapable in the discourse of modern art. I think ambiguity, often created through language, is the double-edged sword of contemporary art. Firstly there is the fun of it is in the audience's ability to interpret freely (sometimes to the extent that the piece is ignored on occasions). But then, as I recently I heard a critic say: our generation is in fact scared of modern art due to its often endless possibilities, and its over-complication of things. Maybe it is language that wards people off, as they seek a word-by-word translation. I know that primarily what I have learnt at art school is how not necessarily to be, but to sound like an artist.

Therefore the question is, is language of benefit, because it, like art, creatively explores the visual. Or does it explore beyond the intended visual exploration (as I proposed in ‘How It Is’ – The Black Box by Miroslaw Balka)? Is language praise-worthy because it brings art alive; or through its jargon and ponse does it hamper the audience from engaging fully with this weird and multi-dimensional character – Art.

So, Rob Ward’s humanized Two, has the physical appearance a silver lollipop and an inverted lollipop that invites us to dine with it, chew on some ideas of the relationship between yourself and it, between the 2D and the 3D, the actual and the metaphysical and which will accordingly leave you feeling the tension of your surreal environment.

It’s quite a lot of fun talking out of your bottom…!

‘Sculpture Promenade 2010’ in displayed in the grounds fronting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from 23 March 2010 until January 2011.

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?2242

Franz Ackermann: Wait at the White Cube

I didn’t know what utopia was until I saw this collection of enigmatic paintings. Yet somehow, I had a real instinctive sense that the work in, ‘Wait’ were a living, breathing, 2010-utopia visually defined. There I was in that situation where you have before you a word you lack the knowledge to define, yet you unexplainably know exactly how to bluff it into context – and you bravely do so with false arrogance, completely ignorantly, in the hope you won’t be Balderdashed.

Apparently then, according to Ackermann’s work, my ideal place or state is a curious culmination of dense jungle, luscious greenery and great expanses of space of land like Tarzan entangled vine scenery (a personal favourite film of mine); and great expanses of atmosphere and space beyond and out of this world. This place is vibrant, florescent and luminescent. A vivid place of life, growth, movement, and constant buzz of activity that narrowly avoid frantic. There is a surplus of information, just about consumerable. Oddly the garishness doesn’t frighten you, it excites you.

This affiliation with landscape (tangible or otherwise) is not by chance. Ackermann builds this sense of location through cohesion of individual elements in a photomontage fashion. Together they form a pseudo-neo-cubist impression of one scene made of many. Fragments of cityscapes, interior and exterior, cultivate a conurbation, which is this utopian urban jungle. It will be unsurprising to you, therefore, that Ackermann’s speaks of his work as comments on urbanisation, globalisation, travel and borders.

In concept and in aesthetics, Franz looks at the big picture. This is to the extent that these paintings lose their impact up close. You will find it a futile task to understand them other than by standing back and slowing absorbing. True though that only by becoming intimate with them will you discover that these aren’t computer-generated images, but hand-built 2D planes, composed to a sense of the 3 and even 4D.

It’s unsurprising also that you will find I immensely enjoyed this exhibition as it conjured up such unearthly and insightful imagination in a fairly matter of fact character. Almost like dramatic irony, (I failed to note before entering the title of the exhibition,) I was hooked by these mysterious, bold and very beautiful paintings. They appear strikingly new. Giving me hope that there are new things to express, and ways to express it in art.

I have struggled to find words to give it justice…I feel like a child with a stutter…Please do go and see.

Pictured -‘Through the Woods’ 2010, Franz Ackermann

‘Wait-Franz Ackermann’ is on show at the White Cube in Mason’s Yard until 1 April. http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/ackermann/lgf/

Back Home

Antony Gormley is taking art back home, into the house of God. Flare II, Gormley’s latest wired figure has recently been installed into the most dramatic exemplar of church architecture in London – St Paul’s Cathedral. But the prodigal son that is Art, has been beckoned back under the pretence of an altered purpose. The cathedral has launched a programme of artworks so discussion can be reignited over the connection between faith and art.

There is more to this than the Church of England’s patronage backing contemporary art to giving it some 21^st century kudos, and there is much more to it than them advertising their religion or using these as icon for worship. This is a celebration of creativity and the power of the visual to express the sublime – that which is ‘set or raise aloft, high up’ and beyond linguists – purely sentiment. In our post-modern age this may be aside from God, but it is the indescribable spiritual.

The sculpture is a delicate and dense wire mesh formed into a dramatic falling figure, or angel, within a cloud. It hangs suspended in a previously unopened stairwell, which could not be a better gallery space. Naturally lit, elegant curves of Sir Christopher Wren’s design, and a wealth of viewing points. The stairs perfectly frame and compliment its new piece of furniture.

The cathedral’s chancellor, in interview, compared faith to art, in that both require you to ask what else you see, and is there more to it. And so,“[t]he sublime is not so much what we’re going back to as where we’re coming from.” – J. L. Nancy.

http://www.stpauls.co.uk/News-Press/Latest-News/St-Pauls-unveils-new-work-by-Antony-Gormley

‘The Sublime’ by Philip Shaw