"The rotting cash cow" by Helena Kotkowska, London
Dealers have reduced art to pure sensationalism in a milieu as elitist as ever
A ceiling made of coloured perspex tiles, extracts in red from a pornographic text copied laboriously onto a white wall – these were two of the exhibits put forward for the Turner Prize show in 2002. The exhibits were reminiscent of those featured in 2001, when the winner was an installation of a room with the light going on and off and the door opening and closing.
Ever since the Sensation Exhibition in 1997, the prized works of the art world have shown an uncanny aptitude for the repetitive, the monotonous and the pseudo-technical. Video installations, photography and films showing the same actions in endless repetition have become standard dull fare, dazzling in their lack of any meaningful content, and chosen, it seems, according to the greatest ability to induce the most soporific effect in the viewer.
Craving for publicity
The ‘Sensation’ exhibition at least stood out in one respect, in that its outstanding use of hype and publicity has surely never been matched before or since and probably owed much to the orchestration of Charles Saatchi, owner of most of the exhibits, advertising tycoon and previously PR man to Margaret Thatcher. Much to the organisers’ delight, no doubt, the ‘shocking’ quality of many of the works – Damien Hirst’s rotting cow’s head with its attendant swarm of flies, the Chapman brothers’ circle of plastic children sprouting genitals instead of noses or mouths, the portrait of Myra Hindley composed of children’s hands – became the focus of attention and was paraded in the press and television for weeks before the exhibition opened.
More publicity was guaranteed when one of the visitors to the exhibition threw eggs at the portrait of Myra Hindley. Further antics followed, with Tracey Emin appearing drunk on a TV chat-show and then walking out mid-programme, while Norman Rosenthal – Director of the Royal Academy – put in an appearance with a glossy, lipstick ‘kiss’ on his cheek. Notoriety was assured, ensuring that the exhibition would attract millions of visitors. It did. The queues of people at the doors of the Royal Academy proved the wisdom of choosing advertising over art.
One could argue that there is nothing wrong with marketing art. In a world where advertising determines the profit outcomes for most products, why should not the art world benefit? Has not art always had sponsors, benefactors and patrons? The problem is that the arts – all of them – have, to an extent, always been the expression of what is best in humanity, a way of transmitting down the ages the things which unite us. Some artists in the past have suffered for their vision. There are those who argue that, in holding art in too great an esteem, there is a danger of inviting elitism, of art becoming elevated to a rarified atmosphere where only the privileged few can enter.
The new elite
However, in the art world that dominates today, another lie is being spun. Under the guise of making art accessible to the many, the art world remains as exclusive as ever. Ticking away behind the scenes is a money-making machine. As Matthew Collings, presenter of the Turner Prize, found out, having some talent ‘helps’ an artist to advance their career, but what really matters, it seems, is ‘where the dealer places the work’. Art dealers, galleries, curators, prestigious museums and public institutions abroad, are still pulling the strings, very much as always, except that now the media (Channel 4 sponsors the prize), advertisers and even corporations are also taking their chunk of the market.
Elitism has never been so rife. Today ‘the celebrity syndrome’ that prevails, with Madonna being asked to present the award at the Turner Prize 2001 and artists’ success being measured as to who can sell their work to Elton John. Contributors to the new ‘designer’ art have to be young and with an inclination to appear on TV. They also need to have the ability to produce such impoverished visual images that the works seem unable to stand on their own, being accompanied more and more frequently on their creators’ part by lengthy monologues and ‘explanations’, as posed and as contrived as the artists themselves. Good technicians are being elevated to the status of artists and, in order to stay in the market, are producing a dreary catalogue of one ‘sensation’ after another, of one ‘shock’ after another.
Sale of the century
‘Conceptual art’ has simply become yet another commodity to be packaged and sold and, even here, nothing new has been invented. Corporations worked out the formula some time ago. When the photograph of Che Guevara was bought as an image to stick on T-shirts, the revolutionary figure was popularised, but also, in a way, belittled. The subversive was ‘accommodated’, tamed, made safe and, as a consequence, trivialised.
Worse, with not a drawing, painting or sculpture in sight at any of the prestigious exhibitions, the suggestion is that only a certain type of work is welcome, creating a no-go area for any differing views. Artists who may be producing works that are more substantial are being ignored, presumably to labour away in poverty.
Advertising may work very well as advertising. It goes for the immediate and the instant, quick to appeal and equally quick to forget. But in using similar techniques in art and treating art as a mere commodity that, like a detergent, has to be flagged and sold, something is lost. Human experience is trivialised, art is brought down to the banal and, instead of meaning or beauty, all we are left with is the cheap effect.
Helena Kotkowska is on the committee of Friends of LMD.
hkotkowska@hotmail.com© Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique
