Saturday, October 29, 2005
as i get further and further submerged in the world of contemporary art, the more disgusted i am by so many aspects of it, and now i really really wonder:
what the fuck is the art world coming to??!! oh look, i used the word '
fuck' in referring to art, call all the international art magazines and splash this story out in all four corners of the fucking earth. if madonna can do it, so can i
.what exactly am i ranting about? well, it goes something like this. one day, i wake up and go to spacelab lecture. peter, as usual, has brought in a whole slew of videos for us to feast our eyes on, and today, he says, is special, because we are watching a progamme following the
1997 turner prize award. of course, i have all these great ideas in mind about what sort of impressive, mind-blowing art could win the bloody turner prize. so he pops in the video, turns off the lights, and the show begins.
.................. ..................
let me put it this way, objectively, so everyone can judge for themselves: the guy who wins the 20,000 pounds of prize money is called martin creed, and his winning art exhibition features
an empty gallery room in the tate gallery in london, with the lights flashing on and off. other art pieces of his are entitled: '
a piece of blu-tack rolled into a ball and pressed against the wall', and '
as many squares of masking tape as are needed to form a 5cm cube stacked one on top of the other'. the titles pretty much sum up the artwork.
now this fella is cavorting in the australian centre for contemporary art (ACCA), with an exhibition that simply consists of the lights turned off in the wing of the gallery, nothing else.
what do i think?
WHAT DO I THINK?!?! what do
you think?! i say this guy is shooting art in the heart! if 'everything is art', as so many claim, then why ugging bother to pay so much bloody money for it??!! because if that's the case, then art isn't anything special anymore, but the amount of money in the art world today says something very different. okay, i give you credit for the concept. but, goddamnit, where is the ugging skill here??!! there is nothing substantial in your artwork! videos of a mother stranging her daughter, i can handle; beeping and humming couches are already pushing it, but an empty room?! with flashing lights that could just be a technical failure?!?!
stop bloody using the subjectivity of art to win easy fame and money. and now a dark gallery wing. if you want to experience the sublimal, go climb an ugging mountain at 2.30am (no offence to mother nature), because
that is the experience of the truly sublimal. it's just a bloody name game now. oh, it's martin creed, wow, his artwork is fantastic, his exhibition is eye-opening. to my utter disgust, ALL my lecturers are raving about it. they're all telling us to go see the exhibition. i've experienced the sublimal already, thank you very much, i'm not paying good money to take a walk through an empty room. i'd rather go back to tioman and walk amongst the trees and fireflies in the dark. at least there is true beauty in that.
the irony of it is that i see his artwork as a very clear, literal portrayal of what is going on in the art world right now (cue dark, cynical laughter). the word 'artist' implies some form of exceptional skill, but the only skills i see here are that of a goddamn
con artist.
i'm sure da vinci is writhing in horror in his grave.
**dream until you die**12:20 PM
