Modernism, post-modernism, post-post-modernism, neo-modernism… anything that involves various prefixes and “modernism” isn’t really my cup of tea.
Two particular offshoots – abstract expressionism and conceptual art – confuse me more than others. I’m torn between the part of my mind that thinks art is whatever you want it to be and that people should be free to express themselves however they want to, and the part that doesn’t approve of people getting paid inordinate amounts of money for what seems to have taken as much effort as it did for me to get out of bed on a cold morning. Does throwing paint at a canvas make you a great artist? Is dedicating your life to trying to shock people an admirable thing to aspire to? Why is it okay to use lackeys to actually create the piece, then take all the credit yourself?
I feel naturally prejudiced against conceptual art, because it gives off the impression of minimal effort. Marcel Duchamp wrote his pseudonym’s signature on a urinal. Tracey Emin put her bed complete with dirty sheets, pants, cigarettes and similar detritus in a gallery space, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
“My Bed”, Tracey Emin, 1998
I want to believe that they put a lot of thought into what they were doing and came to some kind of meaningful conclusion, but I just have this immediate negative reaction when I hear about stuff like this. I can’t separate it from the point of view that anyone could do it – it has very little or no connection to artistic skill and it feels unjust that they get kudos for it. The average person could do exactly the same and just be called an idiot. What makes them so special, the ability to bullshit a meaning for something?
My best grade in my foundation year was for a conceptual art project – the project I put the least effort into. I only vaguely understood the brief, and I basically spent three and a half days painting fruit and veg. I photographed it during the project, then again a month later to show how the food had decayed, if at all. It was fun in a childish let’s-throw-paint-at-this sort of way.
Time & Construction project, me, 2012 (this is silly)
My inspiration (so, ‘concept’, I suppose) was accidentally caused by my discovery of Strawberry Volvic the weekend before the project started – a drink which looks like water but tastes like yoghurt. I can’t even begin to explain how horrifying that is to my idiotic subconscious, it just does not compute (my housemate drinks tons of the stuff and thinks I’m mad, which I think is a fair assumption).
In the end I submitted a folder of photos with a title page saying “Would You Eat This?” and in response, I got a B2. I didn’t expect or feel I deserved a grade that high, especially when projects that I put a lot into got me various kinds of C grade. The mind boggles.
Despite my intense dislike for conceptual art in principle, I do like Marina Abramović. I find her fascinating, and some of her work is really interesting because of how it involves the public. In 1977 she did the performance piece “Imponderabilia” with her collaborator (and lover), Ulay, where they stood naked facing each other in a doorway in a gallery space and people had to walk through the gap between them. On face value that sounds pretty odd, but it’s interesting because the visitors had to make the choice of who to face as they passed through. It often resulted in someone passing between them very awkwardly (practically pushing them out of the way) in an attempt to not have to face either one of them. The gap slowly gets smaller and smaller as they move closer together, but eventually the local police caught wind of what was going on so put a stop to it.
A later collaboration with Ulay – “The Great Wall Walk” had Abramović walking from one end of the The Great Wall of China to the middle point of it 2500 kilometres away, while Ulay walked to the same spot from the other end. They planned to meet in the middle, and get married. It took around 8 years to get permission from the Chinese government to do this, and during that period their relationship deteriorated. They finally did it in 1988, but instead of getting married when they met, they said goodbye. I can’t imagine ever doing anything as dramatic as this myself, especially to break up with someone, but I quite like it. Some people seem to exist on a more spiritual level than the rest of us.
“The Great Wall Walk”, Marina Abramović & Ulay, 1988
Her work at MoMa in 2010 – “The Artist is Present” – was a silent performance where she sat at a table in the museum for 736 hours, while spectators came and sat opposite her, each for a short time. It’s amazing to see the emotional responses she can evoke, and I have to admit I got teary when I saw how she was affected – particularly when she is reunited briefly with Ulay, who visited on the opening night. It’s made a bit sickly by the added music in the video below at roughly 1:20, so I’d recommend watching it without sound.
It seems like so much is communicated between the two of them without a word being said, and even just re-watching it now is making me tear up. A sceptic would say they planned it in advance but honestly, I don’t care if they did. What they went through and worked on together defined who they became, and the sappy romantic in me wants to burst into tears at the thought of it. Did they need to do all of those performances in public? I don’t know, but it takes a lot of discipline and dedication to do what she does, and I admire her for that.
I never intend to go off on an overly long tangent, but I seem to be good at it. I’ll leave abstract expressionism for a later post.
Links:
http://chicagohumanities.org/blog/guest-blog/marina-abramovic-the-space-between
http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/190/1986
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_my_bed.htm
Contextastic 