Back and forth: spectacular art

All of the letters to date are collected here

Dear Jason,

I would like to ask you on what you base your declaration that the general message of post-modern art is that life is pointless. Where does this idea come from? I dont ever recall having seen a work of art that has pointed out to me how pointless life is. If I have seen such a work, it is likely that I just put it out of mind due to the work itself being quite pointless.

Now I should point out that there is a great deal of art that I just dont appreciate or even care about. I do not feel that we have to like or appreciate everything, but I dont feel that this automatically means that we have to rubbish it.

I would agree with you that a great deal of art is self referential and inwardly focused, but I dont think that this is the basis for dismissing contemporary art per se.
I fail to see what basis you have for the claim that aesthetics have taken a back seat to theory. Admittedly there are many artists who work with conceptual, research and socially based strategies wherein aesthetics are not a primary concern. But then I dont see that theres anything wrong with this. I feel that this kind of work is important and I do not share your fear that such work will inevitably force out every other kind of art practice. I shall repeat my mantra from my first text: neither painting or aesthetics ever actually disappeared!
As to your claim about artists being more concerned about what art means than how it is experienced, I have to say that I get the feeling that you yourself are more interested in what art means than how you experience it.
You mention the links between art, sociology and philosophy. Art is not philosophy but there is nothing to say that it cannot include aspects of philosophical thought or even attempt to reproduce philosophical methods. Sociology can certainly not be the sole basis on which to evaluate art, but it can be one of them.
You say that the best art of any era transcends not only its own milieu but also the broader culture which it was a part of. This may be true, but if we follow this idea too slavishly, we inevitably end up ignoring a great deal of interesting art. I fear that this is the unfortunate position you find yourself in. You are looking for eternal values and cant then see the value of anything that doesnt meet these stringent standards.
I completely agree with you on the value of modernism. This seems to be the point we agree most on and have slapped each others backs a few times already in this matter. My experience of art practice today is that the progressive agendas of artists, small institutions, and artist-run initiatives most often have at the least a modernistic origin if not an identifiable modernistic goal. I am not speaking in terms of style, but in terms of ideals and motivation. A lot of art today addresses social issues and many artists work directly with and inside social contexts in order to facilitate dialogue and progress. Other artists work as activists or work directly alongside political and bureaucratic institutions in order to have an influence on social and urban planning issues. I suspect that you will deride this kind of practice as tokenism but I am confidently optimistic about the possibilities for artists and arts workers to push forward with genuinely progressive agendas. My experience of what you refer to as post modern theory is rather a mixed bag. Sometimes seminars about Pierre Bourdieu simply fail to interest anyone but the already converted. At other times discusions about Jacques Derrida and Chantal Mouffe have a genuine practical application in terms of working with arts and their audiences.
As for Duchamp and his attack on art? Well thats the nature of capitalist society. There is nothing that cannot be assimilated. Everything that exists on the margins, everything that is potentially dangerous will eventually be absorbed by the established system and reproduced as radical chic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the art world. Gormley’s plinth work could perhaps be seen as a good example of this. Famous and beloved artist creates edgy, humorous, ‘democratic’ work about ‘reclaiming urban spaces’. In some ways I like Gormley’s work because it brings the idea that art can be more than painting to a wider audience. In other ways I feel it is an half measure as it waters down genuinely radical strategies making them ‘safe’ and partially robbing them of their strength of purpose.
As to the market? Art has never been and never will be separate from the market. Discussions about who or what should take its place as the arbiter of worth are pointless. Art is always in flux. There will always be a variety of different kinds of art with different kinds of agendas that are of varying worth to the market, to institutions, to artists and to audiences. These various currents in art coexist, mingle and exercise influence on one another at different times. There are many different and complex systems of rules and games in the art world. Art that is of immediate interest to the market is no more influential or interesting at any one particular time than art that is not. At the same moment as auction houses are selling work by some contemporary artists for record prices, there are other contemporary artists working hard for something beyond the spectacular and the sensational.

Yours etc.,
Finbar Rosato