Actually, I don't know very much about art at all, classical or modern. I am interested by it, and I do enjoy some art (again, from different periods). I think the difference worth noting is that, although I do not know very much about art, I haven't a) decided it is pointless and b) decided that there is no purpose in learning anythng about it to support that refutation, since see (a). Which is sort of where I lose sympathy.
However, thanks for clarifying your position. I will attempt to answer it.
Your step-by-step:
Premise 1: Almost any work of art, particularly 'conceptual' art is a work of collaboration
Premise 2: The art world is a celebrity culture which elevates the 'genius'
Premise 3: The individual who is elevated as the 'genius' in the production of an artwork is the originator of the concept, not the creator of the object
(e.g. Michaelangelo, Damien Hirst)
Premise 4: There is more to a piece of art than the concept or idea behind it
Combine premises: Premises 4 and 1 are an analogy - the conceptualiser is analogous to the 'idea' behind the art, the creator(s) (or lack of) analogous to the craft that goes into the creation of an artwork.
I think you are fudging two concepts here - "artist" and "genius". I woud quite happily describe somebody as an "artist" and not a "genius". If I do so, what implications arise for point (3)?
Furthermore, although Michaelangelo did not block in every single swathe of paint on the sistine chapel, he did paint the important bits, as well as sketchingreb the outlines. If we allow the term "genius", or even if we do not, does his talent lie in his "conceptualising" of the image of, say, the creation of man, or the quality of his brushstrokes? Your argument seems to be heading towards the potentially untenable viewpoint that craft, which is to say any skill which can be used in the creation of a work of art, is inimical to art, the process of finding a use for those crafts, which seems counter-intuitive.
Looking back to point (2) helps to explain this somewhat. Your objection is not so much to art but to the culture of artists. The culture of artists, or more broadly the "art world" makes individual artists celebrities and calls them "genius".
Note. This is not about art. It is about cliques and money. You may observe a similar process going on in the world of film. Or, indeed, advertising.
So, I would like your permission to put a pin in points 2 and 3, as I believe one to be unsafe and one to be, for our current purposes, irrelevant.
So, points 1 and 4. I would like humbly and without rancour to observe that, while I do not know very much about how art is produced in the modern world, or indeed whether there is a single answer to that question in the face of the wide variety of materials, you have stated your lack of interest in art as a matter of policy, and so presumably know as little or less. However, as I understand your workflow diagram from these points (and this refers back to a point of mine that you have not addressed *at all*, which is your definition of an artwork, which just means we will have to go back to it again so you can ignore it again) goes like this.
a) Person has idea.
b) Person contracts other persons, craftsmen, to assist in the creation of that idea. Since his idea is purely conceptual, he can have no idea of what this idea is supposed to look like. Unless by "conceptualiser" you mean not somebody who grasps a "concept" but somebody who has a "vision" of what a piece of art might look like (in which case they are presumably distinct from the stuckist who limits the means of production of his or her vision to his or her own hands and painting implements only by their ambition). Is this the case?
c) Idea is made flesh. Parts of it apart from the idea (whatever that looks like) are ignored by the orthodox art world in their rush to lionise the "conceptualiser". Please remember that that last point describes the interaction of *humans*, none of whom were involved in the making of the art work. It is relevant only if you believe that the reception of the work is more important than the work itself. A very....conceptual approach, if you'll forgive me saying so.
You may also have noticed that you are not tlaking about art any more. You are talking about the "insiders". I am not an insider, so I really can't comment on this. I know that it does not really matter that I do not know what the "art establishment" has said about 25x5. I am aware they may be able to provide information which some point I may use to gain a different perspective on the world, but right now it matters only that I am appreciating it, on an aesthetic level, and guess what? Nobody has come to tear up my ticket.
So, the problem here is first that you are utterly conflating art in general and a very small group of largely metropolitan art critics and commentators. You are actually talking about *their* reaction to *you*. The artwork itself has become entirely lost.
However, points 1 and 4. Almost all art is a collaborative process, and only one personm is often credited for that process. In the same hideously unfair way that Grant Morrison does not acknowledge the company that made his pens, and paper, and the notebook he jots things down on, and the computer he types into, and the telecommunication company which allows his words to travel by e-mail...
But no. You would limit this contextuality. Let's say to craftsmen whose hands are on implements which are applied to the artwork. So, this si unfair in the same way that it is unfair that Armitage Shanks takes the credit for the toilet rather than the men who *craft* it, or that the Sheldonian is descirbed as "a Christopher Wren building", or that the trousers you are wearing bear the name of the designer label that produced them rather than the workers who stitched them, or "The Streets of San Francisco" is "A Quinn Martin Production". *Lots* of talent actors, cameramen, set dressers, lighting technicians and who knows what else produced this show, Mr. Martin. Actually.
Fortuitously, the response to that involves an explanation of a "position", and a brief description of one of the things I suggested you take a look at which clearly did not impress you very much, as it did not find its way into your response.
Collingwood. Expression theory.
Collingwood (in profoundly simplified form) believed that art was created thus. An artists has an emotion he wishes to work through and express, in the sense of remove from himself - he is seized by an urge. The urge will not leave him until he has constructed (or had constructed, to tie it into your position) an artwork. The artwork itself is the worm-cast of the process of the artist expressing the emotion. However, people looking at the artwork may, by being taken the other way through the same process, come into contact with the same emotion that the artist expressed by creating this work. The work functions as a trigger of a particular emotion in the audience. The work's success is detemrined by how successfully, how "cleanly", the emotion is reproduced in the viewer.
There is a lot of literature refuting expression theory, much of which could be applied to your idealist argument also. You seem to represent the artwork as idea+other bits, with the idea passing along the tunnel of creation and being picked up in its original form by the critical establishment, who then disregard the rest as a mere delivery mechanism.
This is, IMHO, simply not a correct, or even a coherent, way to look at art. I suspect it is not the way your hypothetical group of artistic elitists looks at art, but I don't particularly care, since I do not hang out with them. An artwork is an object an sich, the product of the work of one or more people to create a single thing.
As it happens, the person who had the idea, drew the preliminary sketches, hired the other craftsmen (and I must pause here to point out that your idea of the artist as "conceptualiser" dissociated from the process of creation is, quite simply, silly), made the mould, consulted on how the parts of the process he or she is not technically qualified to perform should proceed and to what end, is generally credited as the artist and can then sell the resultant product, the parts and labour for which have been paid for by that person (or persons), for however the market values ut. They may make a profit or a loss> Their decision to spend time, money and materials on facilitating the creation of this thing may be praised or blamed. The *creators*, to use your term, that is the craftspeople who followed the instructions of the individual identified as the "artist", the trading entity under whose name the work is sold, are paid and move on to the next job.
Not dissimilar to the way a speedboat is made, or one of Jack Rolfe's wood-bottomed boats from Howard's Way. It seems to me a very ordinary, not-at-all-precious modus operandi of light manufacturing industry.
There. A position I do hope the chance of being able to kick it around has inspired you to read some of the earlier stuff as well. Rebuttal and reaffirmation is indeed very dull, but while you refuse to engage intelligently with dissenting voices, it is almost inevitable.
Another thing to look at - the contradiction of this position - "It is wrong to separate art from craft. Look at those artists! They're cunts! Not like craftsmen!", and, perhaps most tellingly, the confusion of art and those who create it with the "cultural establishment". My position is that I do not belong to a metropolitan artistic elite who decide who is a celebrity and who not, and I doubt that all of the n million people who visited the Tate Modern (as an example) do either. I look at art, I feel various things about it, depending on what it is and how I react to it, a complex dialogue with the complete entity. If I like something enough and have the money, I may buy it, although none of the pieces pictured in Todd's article really turn me on.
And, lest we forget, an awful lot of modern art is on display free or inexpensively, which surely is not hopelessly elitist. Admittedly, the fact that galleries tend to be open during working hours does discriminate against people with regular jobs, as opposed to wealthy layabouts or insomniac artists/students, but the same could be said of Boots the chemists.
So, my position would suggest that your idea of "genius" as you construct it is an eidolon, one that might be shared by a few others, but that a more reasonable (and more common) classification system might be based around "talent" on the part of the artist and his or her co-workers/employees. Brand recognition may be important on an economic level, but surely the point is to give people the freedom to see and be affected by as much art (or music, or culture, or comics, or whatver) as they want to be, and to allow them to make their own decisions.
What I find a little disorienting about the current debate is that your dogmatic approach to your own beliefs about art suggests a massive confidence in them (or a forensic incapability or unwillingness to read and digest long, tiring threads), while you profess no interest in it whatsoever. Is the problem here really not about art at all, but about your animosity towards the "art world"?
[ 17-07-2001: Message edited by: The Haus of Thorns ] |
boing!