CRAP, LITERALLY

Why it's OK not to like modern art: Modern art's duty to shine an aesthetic light on the soul has been eclipsed by commercialism (Julian Spalding, May 08, 2003, Times of London)

Unbelievable as it might seem to those unfamiliar with the world of modern art, the self-styled artist Piero Manzoni canned, labelled, exhibited and sold his own excrement (90 tins of it) in the early 1960s. The Tate has recently acquired No 68 of this canned edition for the sum of L22,300. They have coyly catalogued it as a "tin can with paper wrapping with unidentified contents". None of those who collected Manzoni's tins has, as far as I know, tested the veracity of their contents, but then, who would want to?

In another work, Manzoni drew a line on a strip of paper - a single long line, in ink - rolled it up, put it in a tube, sealed it and recorded the length of the line and the date of its making on a label pasted to the outside of the tube. The idea was that these tubes, containing lines of different lengths, should remain unopened.

This takes the triumph of wrapping over content to its logical, but sterile, conclusion. How can a line you cannot see be art? Nevertheless the Tate has two of these tubes in its collection.

It is all too obvious to anyone not in the art world (though always denied by those within it) that a rift has opened between the art being promoted in contemporary galleries and the art that people like to hang on their walls at home. [...]

The very concept of art has been so brutalised in recent years that it is difficult to see how it can survive, let alone revive. Without a widely accepted understanding of what we mean by art, what chance has it to regenerate? The task we face is to clarify what distinguishes a genuine work of art from the ersatz products of today. The quality that links the paintings of Vermeer and Matisse, Grunewald and Picasso, and that earns them the status of works of art--a status few would deny them--is, I would suggest, the aesthetic light that appears to shine out from them. It is worth trying to get closer to what we mean by "aesthetic light", because it is this light that will re-emerge after the eclipse has passed.

Any work of art worthy of the name has an instantaneous effect on first viewing. An artist might bring all sorts of feelings and thoughts into play, but unless he or she manages to make them all contribute to one encompassing, illuminating whole, the work of art will have no heart, no "life" of its own.

Looking at a great work of art makes one feel more fully aware of one's thoughts yet no longer wearied by them, more exposed to one's emotions yet no longer drained by them, more integrated, more composed - more, in a word, conscious. It is the light of consciousness that great works ignite in our minds. It is this quality of luminosity that unites the divine visions of Piero della Francesca with the nightmares of Goya. This is the light that will return to art after the eclipse has passed. A found object, whether it is a brick or a urinal, cannot by itself inspire you with a heightened level of consciousness, just because it is selected and placed in a gallery. The man who designed the urinal did not make it to inspire ideas about art, but for men to urinate into. We can admire, if we are so inclined, the achievement of his aim. Yet how can we ever really know what was in Duchamp's mind when he put it in a gallery?

What imaginative light emanated from Rachel Whiteread's House? It had, it is true, a mournful presence, but this effect was due to its context rather than anything inherent in its form. One could feel sorry for it, but this was essentially a sentimental response, which depended on the feelings one brought to this encounter. Artists try to make statements that transcend private associations: that is what art is--an unconditional gift to others. The greater the art is, the more detached it becomes from private meanings, and the more freely it stands as its own interpreter, to speak to all of humankind. By this criteria House does not even begin to be a work of art.

We've talked about the hoax that is modern Art in reviews of Tom Wolfe's Painted Word and C.P. Snow's Two Cultures, but the best exposition is by Jamie James in his brilliant book Music of the Spheres and James Joyce gave up the game when he said: "The demand I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works." Art is about the artist today, not about Creation. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 10, 2003 11:27 AM