One of these days I read that a 4 meter shark has been put in preserving liquid in an enormous glass container. See here. Some multi-millionaire bought it for six million pounds and noticed that the shark was decaying because of bad preservation work . See also http://www.felixsalmon.com/000344.html. He didn’t get angry but simply asked for a new one, better preserved this time.
The artist is Damien Hirst, the seller Charles Saatchi who bought it for “only” 50,000 British pounds, and now multiplied that amount in his selling.
You understand this is conceptual art, a kind of revival of Dadaism. The shark in its container is not the piece of art, but the idea and its realization are. That’s why it was no big deal to replace the original rotting shark by a new one, which would be impossible with a rotting Rembrandt.
This raises several questions: first, isn’t it ridiculous, not to say a shame, that these amounts are spent to something only because a group of people agree that it is art? Second, what exactly is art? Third, should everybody agree on what is art and what isn’t, and if not, how many should agree, then?
I will try to answer these questions. In Western culture we have art since the ancient Greek (Thanks Conrad for having corrected me on this point). Art had to be the product of skilfull people and had to be admired by all who watched the piece. Producing something that wasn’t admired by most people was nonsense: it simply wasn’t produced, because there was no reason for it. At least, not until the 19th century when questions were raised by groups of artists about the criteria of what makes art art. These criteria were established by the artists themselves, not by art enjoyers or clients. The artist became a kind of prophet, teacher, or priest, and, really, we learned a lot from them as an audience: beauty of expression of emotions, events, situations, life itself, in unusual colours, composition, shapes. The dissatisfaction with their clients’ taste among the artists already began with artists experimenting and studying on their own subjects in their spare hours when they didn’t have to work on assigned, paid-for projects. This artists’ emancipation evolved further and further, until now, in the 19th century, groups of artists started to produce art in a supply-market instead of the pre-19th century demand-market: like it or leave it. It became a desirable goal for an artist to turn down assignments he didn’t like to perform, or to be rejected by the museum-visiting audience. He gradually formed his own elite-audience of rich people and musea, and a certain “clothes of the Emperor” - effect seemed to creep in. Is it a shame that somebody pays six million pounds for pieces of art that seem intended to be innovative, because all other means of expression are exhausted? Much of such art is around the theme of excrements (produced by a machine, canned, in glass cases, etc.) and decay (rotting cow head, with flies around it). Other pieces are more focused on senselessness (dada, an electricity pylon stuffed with loaves, etc.) or are nice moving constructions that are now called “art” because in the old days nobody would think about making them, but now you are called an artist so you make them.
No, I don’t think it’s a shame that artists or art-owners get millions of pounds for their shark preservation work, nor is it a shame when a multi-millionaire pays these amounts for these kinds of products: it is art, because the newspapers and the self-appointed groups who determine what is art and what isn’t, call it art, period. Our free society leave them doing their things. Jealous? Do as they do, but first become accepted by the self-appointed groups and join them.
What I don't find a shame, but a pity, is that “great art” seems to be dead. Maybe that’s what the dead shark is symbolizing. We watch dead corpses of humans who voluntarily made their bodies available for artistic processing, we watch a dead shark, excrements, decay, and call it art. We? Or is it groups of people who produce, buy and sell these things against astronomical prices? I think “we” continue visiting exhibitions of more traditional artists and enjoy their masterpieces. The other two questions now have been answered as well: art has no definition agreed on by all people, but has different meanings to different groups and cultures. That’s I think what most people agree on, and I also have the fullest right, like everybody else has the right to define a heap of shit as art, to get disgusted by death and decay-showing “art”, at the same time tolerating it. The taxes will get their share.
5 comments:
I realize that I once made a post titled "the beauty of decay". This was about decay in its natural environment, not in a museum room. Death and decay are necessary phenomena in nature. Preserving them (stopping the decay process, preserving dead corpses)to show it in an exhibition for other purposes than professional education, criminal investigation etc. raises questions and doesn't effect any other feelings in me than disgust or being cheated by the "artist".
Oh no! I was def. not commenting on your English.. you are a consuming writer (in my opinion) as well as a very engaging person, so far as one can determine peering dimly across the e-flatlands. I was only making a small attempt at 'clever' by remarking something to the effect of the Brittish having libraries (indeed, ha).
I am still unsure how everything works here at blogspot.com -- nevertheless I like you very much so far.
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My favourite line on the subject of "what is art", is; "only History can judge". If formaldehyde can't keep it "alive" (another sort of pun for you) I wonder if History will!
Now Erik I promised I would say something on the last “What is Art” post you made, so please forgive me for not getting there sooner. It is a dangerous bog which is all too easy to sink into. I could be floundering about in it for hours until I eventually go down as there is no one to come and rescue me. It is so much of a personal “problem” or perhaps it is just too broad a term.
For me it is expression of emotion; the emotion I want to express to others (or sometimes selfishly just for me). Sculpture because I find it easier to do the difficult bits and I find the extra dimension better expressed in reality than in illusion.
Yes I believe that the use of photography can be a skill referred to as an art, and some photos can be described as “Art”. (Sorry if that sounds patronising, not intentional.)
Now since the very first work of "Art" we have seen fashion, skill, technology, money, power, politics and religion all affect the style and subject matter of so called “Art”. Perhaps for the first time ever we can express our emotion through “Art” without the interference of all many of those things, even “taboo” seems to have lost a controlling influence judging by some things produced these days (Chapman Brothers for example).
Being fairly uncontroversial I do not need to shock or educate. I do not need to lecture the world. (Unless, like now I have had 3 glasses of wine left over from my Birthday which needed to be “dealt with or thrown away.) Neither do I suffer from “grumpy old man syndrome” of course!
Great pictures, hope you had a Happy Easter.
Thank you for your lecture that you didn't want to hold, Robert. I think we share something and that's modesty. Sometimes I find myself protesting like an old adolescent, seeing around me people getting ahead by firmly advocating what they see as "the right thing to do or to think", and getting rewarded, and if I feel it's unjustified I protest. I know that in history Cézanne, Van Gogh and dada-artists also didn't get recognition. "Les Fauves" developed from a nickname to a name of honour. Let me also be such a "bougeois" not appreciating some excesses of the free art. I think personally that the 6 million pounds is a bad investment. In Holland we had the tulip hype in the 18the century when people paid fortunes for one tulip bulb. This way it will go with the decaying stuff - art. Artists of the world such as you, unite :-)!
Conceptual art is in response to the culture. We live in an information age culture that values ideas more than products. Artists that produce products were in agricultural societies and industrialize societies. The reason why our society still produces product art, like Van Gogh is because the agricultural and industrial societies don't go away when a new age comes along.
I think that our society has moved into a great new age that values concept over the material. In the same way science and economics use theories and concepts to create beautiful or ugly results, so art also uses concepts to my an aesthetic statement. Concept can be transcendental were as the material arts can only mimic or suggest a transcendental state. That my crazy opinion on the matter.
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