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Comment by Louise Gains on 18 November 2008 at 10:03pm

I wonder - do you think there is such a thing as TREND -- in the Art World --- are we all heading in a direction together -- or it is that we humans always want to see patterns so we can feel safe!!!
I think of the image of the lonely Artists in the garret pushing his own private bounderies only to discover that every other garret also has the same art being made in it.
I just wonder if there is such a truth as Orginal Art at all?
I always hope that what I do is brave and new --I suppose really in the end, that is the only truth -
So I say this...to myself...
Is what I create an honest atempt to explain the world, am I true to myself!!!!!!

Comment by Peter e Harper on 18 July 2008 at 2:18pm

One thing that came to mind that made me laugh to myself is how this is all to similar to the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. No one wants to look stupid, so they all admire the beauty of the thing they don't see before them.

Comment by Michael Bowdidge on 16 July 2008 at 1:10pm

Amen to all that Rob!

Comment by Rob Van Beek on 15 July 2008 at 8:54pm

You can only push boundaries where boundaries exist.

You can't award yourself Brownie points for taking a risk, if it is no longer a risk.

Highly original and daring art works are only valued if they turn out to be serious artistic successes as well.

There is a hidden history of artists who postured and positioned like mad, but whose work turns out to be mediorce or worse.

It's interesting and exciting to live at a time when artists are working with different but often overlapping concepts of art.

Artifacts or performances do not magically gain artistic qualities when they are transferred to an artistic setting.

For a period they can be viewed as 'honorary' art works, but that is not enough to change or develop our concept of art.

Concepts belong to the entire language-using community of humanity. What the specialist art community means by art is indexed or anchored to what the wider population means by art.

In principle the concept 'art' is no different from 'chair' or 'shoes'.

Designers can come up with original designs for chairs and shoes. Over time they may succeed in transforming our concepts of 'chair' or 'shoes'.

But many efforts will be seen as 'interesting experiments' or digressions from the norm, or worse, as hopeless mannerisms.

Good concepts are really useful. Cultures don't just give them up at the drop of a hat.

Humanity is not going to ditch a useful concept like art just because of the latest crop of topical examples.

It's worth bearing in mind that we live in a world where many people take real risks and risk real hardship for claiming the most elementary political, legal, educational and artistic freedoms.

Artists should try to hang on to a sense of perspective when we talk about the 'risks' we take, the 'boundaries' we transgress.

In reality one of the great attractions of working as an artist, or in any symbolic media, is that you can take symbolic risks without coming to any real harm.

As artists we can happily waste our own time, or at least I can.

Perhaps the worst thing we can do is waste other peoples time.

I suppose I object to artists wasting other people's time, but it's not that common.

I object to artists who think that art is a vacuous concept, just because their concept of art is a bit vacuous...

Comment by Michael Bowdidge on 15 July 2008 at 1:17am

Rob hits the nail on the head as usual... quite often this kind of 'work' gets dressed up with 'relational aesthetics' to justify the abscence of any art - the problem is that this kind of 'pushing the boundaries' of art has been with us for a very long time and underpins many of our practices, which originate at different points along the long car crash between art and life which was modernism. Whilst I feel justified in myself in saying that Rob's slide may not have been art, not for formal reasons (I haven't seen it) but for reasons of (dubious) intentionality it remains that I feel that I ought to defend someone saying 'this is art' even if i don't agree, for who am I to say 'thus far and no further'. Try as we might we can never 'own' art... only our bit of it, and I'm not even sure about that - it's an interesting problem.

Comment by Hanjo Schmidt on 14 July 2008 at 10:11pm

"Increasingly arts bodies will avoid art and concentrate on spectacle and entertainment instead.
Instead of fighting for an audience for art, which requires commitment and self-education, arts bodies are appeasing a non-art audience with non-art works."
So what I thought was only satirical in my bitter comment seems to become more and more a reality.
Well put Rob.

Comment by Rob Van Beek on 14 July 2008 at 9:51pm

Oops, I thought I had deleted everything after "subsiduary to this" in the previous comment, apologies...

Comment by Rob Van Beek on 14 July 2008 at 9:47pm

Increasingly arts bodies will avoid art and concentrate on spectacle and entertainment instead.

This is a poor strategy.

Instead of fighting for an audience for art, which requires commitment and self-education, arts bodies are appeasing a non-art audience with non-art works.

I was at a gallery which had a slide fixed up for kids as a temporary art installation.

In the short term everyone is happy, the kids are having fun.

But in the medium term, you create the expectation that art galleries are about this kind of experience ('What no slides?', 'What no Giant Spiders?' 'What no Sand'etc.)

Instead of using resources dedicated to art for artistic purposes the gallery chose to appease its audience with a work that was in effect an artwork-substitute.

Is it really so difficult to run an art gallery or museum? All you have to do is have some decent work, a sympathetic environment to experience it in - and the humility to make everything else subsiduary to this.









You do not build the audience for art by giving people entertainment or spectacle instead.

All art galleries have to do create good environment for experiencing art.

Spectacles performed in an art galleries not a way of giving them artistic qua









Is there nothing some artist won't do in the vague how it might help their career? Is there nothing some curator won't defend in the name of art and the artists right to fail?

Comment by Peter e Harper on 11 July 2008 at 1:56pm

Perfectly put Rob!
It could be said, with or without irony, that the viewers/critics are being censored by the art world. If someone has an opinion that does not agree with their opinion than the argument of relativism is brought up; when someone agrees with them it is no longer relativity that is brought up but Truth!
I'd love to see this period in the art world survive without artists statements. I think many critics base their reviews on the statements more than the art, and many artists focus more on the clarity of their words more than the images and ideas conveyed in their art. It's preposterous!

Comment by Michael Bowdidge on 10 July 2008 at 11:41am

Good point Rob, sometimes I often feel almost 'pressured' into defending things as 'a matter of principle'...

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