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But: what are its artistic merits?
Is it a comment on the diamond industry? Perhaps all of industry? Maybe capitalism? Is it self-reflexive, perhaps even self-parody? Is it, as some have suggested, an example of 'bling' taken to a shocking conclusion, and if so, is this really a valid critique of hip-hop culture? Is it a comment on the Christian notion that you 'can't take it with you'?
Why are any of these things neccesarily artistic merits?
If I may step away for a moment from the question of whether or not the work in question has these merits at all, these are all critical and intellectual merits*, and a thing can have all of these and still be a boring and dreary - i.e. artisitically meritless, i.e. flawed - piece of art (like any number of contemporary "installations", or, broadening the spectrum, many of the novels that get taught on postcolonial literature courses, and nearly all "contemporary poetry").
I think the current demand that a thing supply it's "artistic merit" in the form of a more or less mandarinised/symbolicised sociology lesson is as idiotic as the Victorian notion that a thing wasn't art unless it was moral/provided a "moral message".
The things that "fit the bill" in this sense nearly all come with the notion that they are only of interest to people (I include me) who have read some core sociology/critical theory texts, and also that the people who go to see them do so because they feel as though they should** (which is not a modern phenomenon, of course) and who want to see a rough approximation of their opinions in this symbolic, "mandarin" form that can then be pulled apart - it's like a game of Buckaroo, where the art-work is the donkey, the different items on his back are the layers of signification, and where the aim is to actually make the donkey kick, with the "kick" or "money-shot" being your production of a "profound" intellectual reading of the object (which reading of course makes not one iota of difference to society, as it only works on people as educated as you, and you had to have advanced to a stage of being able to make it before you even saw the piece, and the mandarin form of the piece puts off, by creating this "in-group" of "those who understand/appreciate", anyone who hasn't already been told by society that they're "intellectual" - i.e. it tells people who work in Asda to piss off***).
I find the paragraph I've just written to be quite a hard read. Allow me to pause.
The things that "fit the bill" in the aforementioned "art as sociology" sense are also demonstrably lacking in any kind of attempt at drama or beauty - or they have a forced version - "look at how beautiful these hills are because this work is about how you should care more about climate change". I would hold up Francis Bacon as an antithesis to this - however repugnant the paintings are they are also beautiful and dramatic (and he is presenting his subject rather than trying to convince you of something). Now this Hirst peice I find quite beautiful and quite dramatic, but in neither sense is it as acheived as the Aztec original by which it is inspired.
After all of which I would like to point that I am not trying to formulate some sort of idea about the only good art being that which manifestly does not question society, nor that if art can be read as questioning society it must neccesarily be bad - all art, like all produce, can be read as a comment on its society (this is probably the major issue here), and plenty of people produce and sell in tea-rooms dainty pictures of deer and lady-birds whose intention is certainly not to question society and whose art is quite bad.
Rather, I'm trying to point out that 99% of the discourse around art in Britain, and probably most contemporary liberal democracies, is essentially marketing a product to a certain class of people using what ammounts to moralising techniques ("you, who come to see this art-work, are better than they who buy the Nuts magazine because they simply pleasure their base instincts, while you are busily questioning society").
* Well, the idea that it's good because it "criticises" "hip hop culture" is about as intellectually rigorous as Gary Bushell in a wood-chipper, but still. For more on this see this thread.
** I.E. in the Victorian sense because it is "uplifting, bettering", and in the modern sense "because it asks questions" as opposed to "because it is enjoyable/pleasurable".
*** I am sure there are plenty of people working at Asda more than intelligent enough to enjoy books, art, or anything they feel like enjoying, but the art gallery is in many ways still as exclusive a place as it was in the 1800s. For all sorts of reasons it is still not a place that all classes can interface with easily (in the sense of "let's pop out and look at the gallery"). In both cases, 1800s and now, this is unfair, and somewhat hypocritical (the the 1800s we see a gallery allegedly designed to express, as an ideal, "the human condition", in actuality heavily biased towards straight white males, and now we see work that supposedly, as an ideal, "questions" society whilst in actuality excluding most of society from this discourse). |
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