Purity and decadence

“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank,

and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book”, thought

Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

Purity and Decadence

Idea art, chi chi conceptualism, ikea art‘versus’ form, colour, visual pleasure...

A phoney opposition?

• “Should art be concerned with (and preserve at all costs) its own specialised laws, issues and competencies and address an

elevated elite public, actual or ideal? For some, this preserves the Utopian vision of creative human expression untainted by kitsch or political doctrine; for others, it maintains an insulated, socially exclusive and gendered art, with attendant discourse,

which feeds the market in novel objects and provides state and corporate agencies with symbols to be used for whatever

ideological reasons they wish. Alternatively, should art engage with the social and cultural world at large to give expression to

those issues, controversies and interests that are stifled by dominant ideologies? For some this preserves the power of art to engage critically with what Baudelaire called ‘the transitory,

the fugitive, the contingent of the present, in a way that addresses a constituency for whom culture has a broader social base; for others, this is naive, conscience wringing whine leading

to bad art and special pleading. “

Francis Frascina3

“There is a danger in this rivalry of thinking that art which is not visually interesting must ipso facto be

clever, or alternatively of discarding visually interesting art as being ipso facto not clever.“

Dave BeechArtmonthly

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Key features of Conceptual Art • The dematerialisation of the art object -anti

optical - anti formal. Concept over Form. • Resistance to the art market / to corporate

buying power. Critique of the institutions of art (museums, critics, dealers)

• Investigation of the status of the art object -the ontology of art -art that didn’t look like art.

• A rejection of the myths of modernism - especially in relation to ideas of expression, authenticity (see collaborative practice)

• New mediums - the embrace of non conventional forms for artistic communication - text, photography, video, performance- the search for more democratic forms of communicating.

• A questioning of the social role of the artist - artists no longer mute doers.

• A re-imagining of the role of the spectator - a shift from a passive consumer of aesthetic objects- to an active reader and interpreter

Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, Jones Beach, New York, Duration of Exposure: 5 hours. Dennis Oppenheim, 1970-1974.

The ontology of artThe Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth remarked that the

‘purest’ definition of conceptual artwould be that it is an inquiry into the foundations

of the concept ‘art’.

John Baldessari‘What is Painting’ 1968

“Art doesn’t require being able to draw, or being able to paint well or know colours, it doesn’t require any of those specific things that are in the discipline, to be interesting”

Bruce Nauman

Anti Aesthetic - Anti Object

The New Spirit in Painting Royal Academy (1981)

“Schnabel had rediscovered the joy in art”New Spirit in Painting Catalogue

Sean ScullyPaul1984

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Neo Conceptualism (1990-98)

Artists react against what is seen as the parochial, out dated conservative appearance, tone and values of the British art world. Conceptualism has a pure, ‘international’ style.

A generation of younger artists, specifically in London at Goldsmith’s college and in Glasgow at GSA ‘rediscover’ (copy, appropriate or repackage) the work of first generation conceptual artist from the late 1960’s and 70’s.

Partly this shift is stylistic (black and white, minimalism devoid of signs of the hand or ‘touch’) . It also asserts the primacy of the idea, for some, at the expense of the form or material.

Unlike first generation (60’s and 70’s) conceptualists, these artists were keen to transport ‘idea art’ into the everyday.

Julian Opie

Gillian Wearing

Simon Patterson

The Asthmatic Escaped II, 1992Glass, metal, camera on tripod, shoes, clothing, film, saucer, plastic cup and lid, candy bar, and inhaler87 x 168 1/4 x 83 3/4 in. (221.0 x 427.4 x 212.7 cm.)

Damien Hirst

Glasgow Neo-Conceptualism

Key Artists:Douglas Gordon

Christine BorlandRoderick Buchanan

Jacqueline Donachie

Douglas Gordon

Roderick Buchanan

Socially Engaged?

Work in Progress1995

The men in 'Work in Progress' are wearing either Inter Milan or AC Milan football team shirts. The type of portrait is familiar from football publicity photographs, where the players stare ahead with their arms held behind their backs. However, instead of being Italian sportsmen, the players are from amateur five-a-side Glasgow teams. Their separation into two sets alludes to the need of individuals to lend themselves a separate identity, while at the same time maintaining common bonds of knowledge and agreed opinion. The implied rivalry echoes the competition between the two Glasgow football teams, Rangers and Celtic.

National Gallery of Scotland

Christine Borland

“Today we have nominal triggers for regurgitating arguments better rehearsed elsewhere, which are neither illuminated nor in any sense present within the work. This is work that is essentially literary. Work that repels the senses and takes us off to the library. The press release is the pitch, is the interpretation, is the whole work ready to be phoned around the world. Art that in deconstructive logic is a footnote to the text which justifies its existence. “

Mark Wallinger“Fool Britannia: not new , not clever, not funny”

Criticisms of - reaction against ‘idea’ art

The lost radicalism

• ’Saatchi’s taste is very much for art that looks like advertisments, and who -except an adman -would want to own one of them?”Julian Stallabrass High Art Lite pg. 201

• Idea art becomes ikea art -”you got to have a good idea” - the tyranny of the good idea

• Fetish made of ‘being seen to be sharp and smart’ - chi chi conceptualism

“People having been looking at work and saying that’s a nice idea. I really hate

good ideas, why not write them down? “

Robert JohnstonUntitled magazine

“The only thing Neo Conceptualists share with Conceptualists is the use

of the word conceptual.”

Terry Atkinson

The Idea is to Shock

Paintings back! (again..) Did it ever go away?

• Visual pleasure - return of the seductive, opulent, unashamed reveling in the pleasures of painting.

• A reaction against the dominance of photographic, video, installation ‘idea’ based art, as well as the use of ready made and the lo fi

• A desire to produce work that was resistant to easy incorporation with the machinery of the culture industry (educational workshops - too easily pitchable one liners)

“Inevitably , the yba cult of personality became tired. .New artists and curators began looking elsewhere. Artists wanted to make art without anyone peering over their shoulders. They became enthusiastic about making things again. Art started to look like it was having more fun while artists remained serious in how they reflected their concerns…Cynicism was finally passe and the art star a bore..”

Dick Price‘Die Young Stay Pretty’

Martin Maloney

Dan Perfect David Thorpe

Daniel Coombes

Chantal Joffe

“In the art world, this new tendency has been seen largely for what it is: a cynical ploy, given the growing dissatisfaction with the antics of high art lite, to push the art market on in a direction that Saatchi can control”

Julian StallabrassSaatchi and Sensation‘High Art Lite’

Dave Hickey• Key texts “Air guitar” “The Invisible Dragon - Four

Essays on Beauty”• A critique of the austere, censorious politically

correct culture that has, for Hickey, engulfed American art since the early seventies.

• Hickey’s writing aims to place questions of aesthetics - of visual pleasure, experience, fun and most importantly for him beauty, back on the agenda.

• “A lanky graduate student had risen to his feet and was soliciting my opinion as to what “the issue of the Nineties” would be. Snatched from my reverie, I said, “Beauty”, and then more firmly. “the issue of the nineties will be beauty [..] the total, uncomprehending silence that greeted this modest proposal lent it immediate credence for me. “ (Enter the Dragon on the vernacular of Beauty pg. 11)

• His essays aim to invoke a relationship to art based on enthusiasm and being a fan, rather than theoretical interpretation, critical deconstruction or a demonstration of arts social usefulness.

• Theological nit picking and sensory deprivation

“What is the good of music? What is the good of painting? There is nothing truly beautiful that can be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need..The most useful room in a house is a latrine”

Theophile Gautier (1811-72 Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin)

• “The artist Renne Green has enumerated some current art world cliches exemplified by Hickey’s thinking:

• Art is borderless• Thinking causes over seriousness and the deflation of fun and beauty, which

are equated with aesthetic pleasure.

• To think means to think too much,and is in conflict with expereincing (which is thought of in binary terms and is thus associated with feeling,i.e feeling/experiencing vs. thinking).

• Hickey strangely presumes that people - and educated art audiences in particular - cannot take pleasure in a demanding work, or a political work, or even a play of ideas”

• Julian Stallabrass

• Art Incorporated35

• In his books he constantly alludes to his rich and cultured background, but systematically fails to see the connection between this socialisation within culture, and his subsequent feelings of being so at home within art. Instead of acknowledging that his sense of belonging is a cultural privilege, intrinsically linked to social inequalities within the broader culture, he turns it into a kind of magical gift. But, Hickey’s sense of belonging within culture is simply not available to everyone. In this respect he perfectly typifies Bourdieu’s remarks that the greatest mystifers are the most mystified.

•

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Early One MorningWhitechapel Gallery

London 06 July - 08 August 2002

Their work demonstrates a sensuous enjoyment of materials, which they activate in dynamic and unexpected configurations. Largely abstract in composition, their work reclaims beauty and pleasure, sampling from the formal strategies of Modernism at the same time as design, fashion, music and advertising. Their works can be spatial, tactile and riotously colourful.

http://www.whitechapel.org/images/disappearer360h_0.jpg

“I wanted to undo the idea of minimalism as incorruptible, overlapping it with ideas of faith, death, magic, things that are all very messy in a way. I like the idea of corrupting, of scratching the pristine surface. It’s like the object tries to be itself but we bring something to it that changes it, a bizarre occultism. “

Eva Rothschild

Installation view at Whitechapel Gallery

“Why is that whilst the world outside spirals in ever tighter circles of terror and repression, and the potential avenues of avoidance or resistance become squeezed by the growing dominance of capital and its civil and military bulldogs, artists retreat further into a hermetic world of abstraction, formalism, deferred meanings and latent spiritualism?”

Nick EvansTired of the Soup d’Jour?Variant

EVA ROTHSCHILD

Early Learning, 2002

New Formalism? A Reactionary Turn?

40Tom OʼSullivan and Joanne Tatham

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• “Such art can only really be appreciated by those involved intimately with its production and reception. It encourages true cultural commitment, mitigates against larger audiences and provides few points of access for curators who need to fulfil educational programmes”

Neil Mulholland

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Liza Lou - White Cube 2006

Decadence?

Fred Tomaselli

Laura Owens

Beatriz MilhazesInka Essenhigh

The Subjectivity of Beauty or the Tyranny of Good Taste

• “The things that seem beautiful, inspiring and life-affirming to me, seem ugly, hateful and ludicrous to most other people.”

•Pat Califia, Macho Sluts

Matthew Ritchie

Martin Kippenberger

Keith Tyson

Lucy McKenzie

• THE ARTIST PRESENTS THE SPECTACLE OF FOUR TEN BY THIRTY-FIVE FEET BACK-LIT TABLEAUX, DIGITALLY PRINTED ON VINYL, DEPICTING SCENES OF PEOPLE STANDING IN A SEDUCTIVE AND INFINITE OCEAN IN THE THROES OF ECSTASY. These are people SAYING ʻYESʼ TO LIFE – CAUGHT IN THE THRALL OF THE EVENT AND SPREADING THEIR DESIRE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD LIKE A CONTAGION. It may be unclear whether these poses are the result of ʻFREE WILLʼ or whether they are fixed as narrative or compositional elements within a wider ʻphilosophical context,ʼ but in fact these questions are subsidiary to the performative or ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE of the works as the staging of a staging, or PRESENTATION OF A PRESENTATION. A SELF-ARTICULATION OF THE FICTION OF AN ARTWORK-AS-EVENT-AS-PROPHECY-AND/OR CURSE OF THE UNLEASHING OF THE POWER OF THE FALSE. In this respect the SHIMMERING SUN-SOAKED PLANE OF THE OCEAN is equivalent to the illuminated surface of the picture/object plane, both PITCHED SUPERFICIALLY AT THE SURFACE OF THINGS as an absolute (abstract/virtual) flatness – an incorporeal realm where the forms, passions, shapes and rhythms of this flatness might slip and explode as ideas, shapes, states of affairs, bodies and forces in the real world, FROM WHICH THEY ARE ANYWAY NOT SEPARATED.

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John Russell

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