Before Photography

 

Monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei’s art is monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei, I suspect, would like me to feel guilt, and as I walk out of his new exhibition, guilt is what I feel. Not, though, over my complicity in Britain’s imperial deeds, or our more recent adventures abroad, both of which Ai invokes while studying the murky legacies of the West.

Rather, I’m guilty about the prospect of giving two stars to Button Up! Ai himself can take it: now 68 years old, he’s perhaps the world’s best-known living artist, a Western poster boy for resisting the Chinese regime – he lives, at least some of the time, in Britain – and his name alone should generate healthy ticket sales.

Button Up!, too, mounted in a single vast space at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, and described as Ai’s “largest site-specific exhibition to date”, is neatly presented – even, occasionally, stark. No blame accrues to the proverbial village, from curatorial staff to specialist artisans, who’ve brought it all into being. The problem, from top to bottom, is Ai Weiwei.


It may be meaningless and it seems to be woke, but it does display the art of governing supposedly educated minds.


It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Shopping

 

Masterpiece

Collector Jennifer Gilbert Is Selling Masterpieces at Sotheby’s to Fund a New Arts Nonprofit in Detroit

The Detroit patron and philanthropist is parting with major works by Joan Mitchell, Kenneth Noland, George Rickey and Harry Bertoia to fund Lumana, an arts hub opening in Little Village in 2027.

One of the masterpieces -

 

Kenneth Noland’s Rare Circle,
which has a $4-6 million estimate

Moonlight

Sir Edward Elgar : In Moonlight. John Atkinson Grimshaw : Paintings.

Uninteresting 1B 2025

Scientists identify a mystery color in one of Jackson Pollock's paintings

Scientists have identified the origins of the blue color in one of Jackson Pollock’s paintings with a little help from chemistry

 

“Number 1A, 1948,” showcases Pollock's classic style: paint has been dripped and splattered across the canvas, creating a vivid, multicolored work. Pollock even gave the piece a personal touch, adding his handprints near the top

Thought crimes that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the pub

Josephine Bartosch has a powerful Critic piece on the stultifying effect of political conformity within the art world.


The arts are being crippled by conformity

A new report shows that the last place to find rebellion is the arts world

In the popular imagination, artists are rebels — free spirits flicking Vs at authority while basking in the freedoms of Western democracy. But today’s creative class looks less like a band of iconoclasts and more like a guild of nervous bureaucrats. A new report from Freedom in the Arts (FITA) reveals institutions gripped by fear, where opinions outside the pages of The Guardian are about as welcome as a progress Pride flag in Gaza.

FITA surveyed nearly 500 respondents working across theatre, visual arts, literature and music. The report found 84 per cent don’t feel free to express their politics. Nearly 80 per cent report harassment for stepping out of ideological line, and 78 per cent agree with the statement “people working in the arts wouldn’t dare own up to right-of-centre political opinions”.

Report authors Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy — one a choreographer, the other a former Arts Council insider — learned first hand the price of nonconformity. Both were professionally kneecapped for thought crimes that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the pub.

The problem may be familiar, but the whole piece is well worth reading for the way in which it so thoroughly castigates current artistic pretensions.

These dinner party bores seem to believe that we are on the cusp of a fascist uprising, and that the best way to deal with this is to suppress difficult conversations lest the impolite masses rampage through the dessert course. Consequently, the straplines and programmes of the UK’s major galleries have all the joy and creativity of a Stalinist five year plan. The Tate’s strategy boasts of an intention to “increase our holdings of women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, minority artists and artists of colour.”

Forget the election nonsense - this is Art

Banksy's ‘Broken Heart' painting defaced on a Brooklyn wall is up for sale

When the enigmatic street artist Banksy spray-painted a heart-shaped balloon covered with a Band-Aid on the wall of a Brooklyn warehouse, the nondescript brick building was instantly transformed into an art destination and the canvas of an unlikely graffiti battle.

Almost as soon as Banksy revealed the piece back in 2013, an anonymous tagger brazenly walked up and spray painted the words “Omar NYC” in red beside the balloon, to the dismay of onlookers...

Maria Georgiadis, whose family owned the now-demolished warehouse and ultimately removed the section of wall to preserve the artwork, says the graffiti pastiche is quintessentially New York.

“It looks like a war going on,” she said recently. “They’re literally going at it on the wall.”

The preserved wall, dubbed “Battle to Survive a Broken Heart,” will be going up for sale May 21 at Guernsey’s, the New York auction house.

'Broken Art' would have been more apt, but no doubt that has been said and no doubt the thing will sell anyway.

Iffy Sculpture

Artist behind 'disturbing' sculpture says it's not intended to cause upset

The artist who created a sculpture which has been called "disturbing" and "shocking" says he's been "surprised" at the backlash but welcomes difficult conversations it might inspire.

The Alluvia - which is made from recycled glass and steel and features LEDs which light up at night - was installed in the River Stour, in Taylor's hometown of Canterbury in Kent around a week ago.

Reminds me quite strongly of a corpse I once saw floating down the canal in Nottingham. I'm not surprised people find it a bit iffy.

Art for sixth formers

'Art for sixth formers': Is the public falling out of love with Banksy?

For some, he is one of the 21st century's most significant artists. For others, he is a nuisance. After several of his latest animal-themed street designs were removed, critics are questioning if Banksy's fame now eclipses the political value of his work.

Dr Paul Gough, vice chancellor of Arts University Bournemouth and Banksy expert, says some of the reception to the artist's zoo series was a bit lukewarm.

"Some of the feedback was that the stencils were okay, but they weren't top-notch compared to what I've seen before," he says.


Imagine being known as a Banksy expert...

Although - after giving it some thought, it's clearly far better than being a climate change expert who is regularly featured on the BBC.

A Boot in the Gongs

‘Dame Tracey’ has a good ring to it, says artist Emin after surprise gong in King’s Birthday Honours

Tracey Emin has said that a damehood “has a good ring to it” after receiving the “brilliant surprise” in the King’s Birthday Honours list.

The artist, 60, has been awarded the recognition for her services to art over a career spanning more than four decades.

An artistic boot in the gongs. Some unknown person has managed to stick the boot into pretentious art and the honours system in one neat kick. Give that person a... well obviously not a medal. 

To throw in a bit of fairy dust

‘I was after mystique rather than power’: artist Jonathan Yeo on his radical portrait of King Charles

How do you paint a modern monarch? Jonathan Yeo, in his life portrait of King Charles commissioned on behalf of the Drapers’ Company and unveiled today at Buckingham Palace has achieved this – and it is fair to say, it has been long in the coming...

“I wanted to open up his character to other interpretations” Yeo, who is a personal friend, told me when he first showed it to me a few weeks ago. “The military is not the thing we will know him for. I was after mystique rather than power - to throw in a bit of fairy dust if you like. To that end, I also changed the tone of red to something more artificial and fantastical”


I think I see what he's getting at here - I was after mystique rather than power - to throw in a bit of fairy dust if you like. Fairy dust is a clear reference to the mystical arcana of climate change, the inner mysteries and magical measures used to fight the twin evils of scepticism and veracity.

Through art we catch a glimpse of the majestic workings of minimalist thought and the sublime, the barely comprehensible rejection of superfluous intellectual dignity. 

It's a nice painting too.

Prestigious

Artist who covered a car with a doily up for Turner Prize

The shortlist for 2024’s Turner Prize has been announced and includes Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who covered a red sports car with an ornamental doily mat.

Manilla-born Pio Abad, Manchester-born Claudette Johnson, Glasgow-born Kaur and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas have been nominated in the prize’s 40th anniversary as the prestigious art event returns to London’s Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.

It's an extremely large doily, so maybe that makes a statement. 

It's still mildly surprising that anyone enters this competition. Being artistically naïve I'd expect other artists to snigger at the winner to such an extent that it would be a significant career setback. Something to miss off the CV perhaps, but apparently not.

Must be the moolah.

Possibly the poorest quality work

 

Prince Philip statue to be removed after Cambridge council brands it 'poorest quality work'

A sculpture in Cambridge said to represent Prince Philip is to be pulled down after the city council branded it “possibly the poorest quality work” it had seen.

The controversial artwork is understood to have cost £150,000, and is supposed to resemble the late Duke of Edinburgh in his role as vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

The abstract 13ft bronze - named The Don - takes the form of a towering figure, in flowing black-and-gold academic robes and a mortarboard.

It's not the poorest quality work I've seen. A few years ago I saw a sketch by Tracey Emin which was certainly worse than that - and the dealer wanted money for it.

Twaddle In Three Dimensions

 

Dame Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture from Wakefield-born sculptor auctioned for almost half a million pounds

A golden sculpture entitled Three Curves With Strings (Gold Mincarlo) by artist Dame Barbara Hepworth has been auctioned for almost half a million pounds.

Don’t forget the quality, mum!

CAPX has reproduced an entertaining paper on arts policy by Kingsley Amis.


The idea of a novelist of the stature of Kingsley Amis speaking at a Conservative Party Conference today is, frankly, laughable. But in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher gave her first conference speech as Prime Minister, Amis addressed a fringe meeting hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies. Reading his remarks, it becomes less surprising that the author of Lucky Jim – the ‘Angry Young Man’ who satirised the stultifying conventions of post-war society – would associate himself with the early radicalism of the CPS.


An arts policy?

As you’ll see soon enough, what I have to say carries no special authority. I’ve been selling my work for nearly thirty years and living off it for over fifteen. I have some experience of other arts as what’s now called a consumer. I’m a member of the Writers’ Guild, but not a very active one, I’m afraid, and I’ve never sat on any panel or board or committee concerned with administering the arts. So at any rate I have no vested interest in the matter. I’ve a vested interest in surviving, like everybody else, and also like everybody else another one in not being told what to do. More of that in a minute.

You may not think so, but I chose my title with some care. An arts policy? Only one single policy for all those different arts? An arts policy? What a horrible bureaucrat’s phrase, with ‘arts’ used as an adjective. An arts policy? As Mr St John-Stevas asked, ‘Why should a political party have an arts policy at all?’ and I think any Conservative approaches the subject not with the eagerness of the planner but with the feelings of someone reluctantly settling down to a not-very-exciting duty. I hope so, anyway. The question-mark in my title is meant to show that reluctance. It also shows indecision: I’m not sure what policy is best. And that’s rare; my friends will tell you that for Amis not to be absolutely certain what he thinks on any topic from Aberystwyth to Zoroastrianism is almost unknown. The question-mark stands for another kind of uncertainty too: I had to give the organisers the title before I wrote the talk, and as usual didn’t know a lot about what I was going to say until I was down to the job.


The whole piece is well worth reading. In essence it is at least as relevant today as it was when Amis penned it.


I may have come a bit too far too fast. Anyway, clause (B) of the socialist arts policy goes: ‘To increase the quality and diversity of the arts with greater emphasis on those based in communities’. So my duty is clear. I must write better, which had never occurred to me before, and I must write more sorts of things, epic poems and introductions to catalogues of exhibitions of experimental paintings and gags for TV shows – remember they’re art too, even though they are often termed as entertainment. Actually, more than this is required. ‘A socialist policy’, they say further on, requires more books, and a wider range and higher quality of books to be published, written by authors of every sort of social background’.

Naturally. But why aren’t people writing these high-quality books already? Our friends seem to think quality is a sort of optional ingredient or extra like HP sauce on sausages: ‘Don’t forget the quality, mum!’ Years ago, when the universities were beginning to expand their intake, I wrote of university students, ‘You cannot decide to have more good ones. All you can decide to have is more. And more will mean worse.’ So with books, so with painting, so with everything. An artist is a special kind of man, or woman, there are never many around at one time and there’s no way of making new ones, even by spending money. Authors are certainly going to have some money spent on them, though, because literature is, ‘an underfinanced artistic area’. Would you let someone who talked about ‘underfinanced literature areas’ recommend you a book?

Looney Tunes background art

While watching cartoons with the kids then grandkids, I've often found myself looking at the background art rather than the cartoon, especially cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s. 

The culture industry

William Deresiewicz has a fine Tablet piece on how the arts and modern artistic culture became so boring. It isn't even necessary to agree with the whole piece in order to savour the general thrust of it.


We’re All Bored of Culture

Anglo-Calvinist moralism has turned the American arts into something strenuously polite and deadly dull

I'm bored; you’re bored; we’re all bored. By our books and movies and television shows, the endless blandness of the Netflix queue, by our music and theater and art. Culture now is strenuously cautious, nervously polite, earnestly worthy, ploddingly obvious, and above all, dismally predictable. It never dares to stray beyond the four corners of the already known. Robert Hughes spoke of the shock of the new, his phrase for modernism in the arts. Now there’s nothing that is shocking, and nothing that is new: irresponsible, dangerous; singular, original; the child of one weird, interesting brain. Decent we have, sometimes even good: well-made, professional, passing the time. But wild, indelible, commanding us without appeal to change our lives? I don’t think we even remember what that feels like.


The article is well worth reading in full. For example this paragraph on how our tastes are reflected back at us. We know it, but sometimes in the clamour of the public arena we may forget how subtly significant this is.


The point is not that corporations have degraded popular taste. It is the opposite. The culture industry, like the junk food industry, has gotten very good at satisfying it, at reflecting back our taste to us. And with the internet, the feedback loops have gotten ever more efficient. Art is boring now, in other words, because we are boring. Art is woke because we are woke. Art is bland and unimaginative because we have landed ourselves in the lamentable position of getting exactly what we want.

Reasons to be joyful

  

Pablo Picasso's 'joyful' portrait of daughter sells for £18m at Sotheby's

Maya Ruiz-Picasso was born on 5 September 1935 in secrecy to Pablo Picasso’s mistress and greatest love Marie-Thérèse Walter, while the artist was still married to his first wife, former ballerina Olga Khokhlova. Picasso's portrait of her was once owned by Gianni Versace.

I'm not a connoisseur, but getting rid of the thing by selling it for £18m has to be a reason to be joyful. 

A Tragedy in Blue

 

A Jeff Koons sculpture worth £35,000 has been accidentally smashed during a VIP event at a gallery in Miami.

The piece, a small, blue version of the artist's famous "balloon dog" series was on display during the preview event at the Art Wynwood gallery.

A number of guests initially thought the mishap was a piece of performance art or a stunt when it crashed to the ground.

I wouldn't pay that much for a car, but I'm not artistic.