Jokes and understanding Contemporary Art

I was just reading an article, "Young at Art", from the Sunday Times Supplement (2/12/2007). The main part of the article was about how the paintings of a young girl of four had been fetching prices of about 300,000 dollars. Later, some evidence came to light which seems to indicate that it was not simply all the girl's unaided, unprompted work. However, it does raise the question of how the value of items of art can be established - which also raises the question of how they can be understood, particularly if they are non-figurative.

It seems to me that an important tool is to apply the same rules to understanding art that you would apply to understanding humour. Much of the best modern work – that I believe is liable to last – I would associate with inventiveness and a sense of fun (whether or not ostensibly meant so by the artist). A joke shares something with a work of art: it twists things so that you look at them in a new light, often juxtaposing things that you would not normally think of as going together. In this light, Damian Hurst's diamond-coated skull can be thought of as a rather obscene joke about the art market - and how much some art collectors are prepared to pay - rather than a profound statement about death. The crack in the floor of the Tate Modern works well as a visual joke - which is why it appears to be attracting many fascinated visitors - but perhaps not so well as a deep statement about the separation of developed and under-developed countries and alienated minorities.

Jokes - like art - can be thought-provoking, witty, simple or complex, cynical, satirical, in good or bad taste, offensive, upsetting, re-assuring and - sometimes - just plain bad! I think that this way of understanding art is obtained from one's first reaction to the piece - without reference to what the artist might say about it. Just a feeling about what the piece is saying based on what the piece looks like, the materials it is known to have be made from and the context within which it is presented. Looked at like this, Duchamp's ready-made "Fountain" (a ceramic urinal which he signed (R. Mutt"), can be understood as being a work of art, but also a rather unpleasant and deliberately offensive joke on the art-going public of the time (1917).
If you decide that you appreciate the "joke", it is then worth considering other factors in order to decide if its purchase (presuming it is purchasable) represents value for money. In a recent TV programme about the Frieze Art Fair (“Imagine: How to Get On in the Art World”), the presenter, Alan Yentob, bought a sculpture, one of an edition of three, by George Henry Longley, at £3,500. It represents a play on the idea of a ladder. Longley transformed it by sealing off the ends and changing the five rungs by using a diamond cross-section. The final piece in, presumably, welded metal is painted bright red. When you take it that the dealer is probably getting at least half of the final price and taking into account the difficulties of making the piece, the cost does not seem unreasonable. Displayed against a white wall in a room of Alan Yentob's house, the ladder made a striking display and, to me at least, made art historical connections with a whole type of contemporary art. Hence I think that it was a very reasonable, if not earth-shattering, purchase. Witty enough to be interesting and decorative enough to work in the context of a private house. Not the sort of work that I would want for myself, but one that I can appreciate in someone else's house.

The big question, I think, is to establish whether or not you can laugh with the work of art, or whether the joke is on you!

Contemporary Art and Exhibitions

"Two Women Talking", October 2007.

Oils on canvas, 30 cm x 40 cm.

My art exhibition is now over and I am pleased with the results - some sales and enough commissions to keep me busy for much of the year to come! Perhaps more important, in the long term, was that the reaction from visitors was very good. This is important because it encourages me to think that I am on the right track with regard to the type of work I am producing.

However, I have reservations with regard to the number of visitors that I was able to attract. I had about 130-150, which wasn't bad for a one-man exhibition in a small town. Some of my visitors either knew me personally or had a particular interest in art already, so it was not surprising that they enjoyed the exhibition. The particularly encouraging part was that I also had a number of very casual visitors, not particularly interested in art, but who reacted very favourably once inside. The discouraging part was that I did not have more of these casual visitors! I suspect that this was not to do with me personally, but rather that there is a general reaction from many members of the public which prejudges an art exhibition as likely to be boring!

A lot of contemporary art relies on its ability to shock, puzzle, bewilder and/or intrigue the spectator. But these effects are subject to the law of diminishing returns, which means that the increased search for the new and novel nevertheless has a decreased response from the viewer. This, I believe, has resulted in an alienation of the public. To some degree, the gap is filled by hobbyists and by those artists who are prepared to paint simply to suit popular tastes – primarily decorative landscapes. The difficulty with this, is that the quality of the work is often not high. Even if the painting is technically good, it is rarely intellectually challenging. The result is that the popular art going public tends to be confined to the artists themselves, their immediate friends and relations, and buyers who are simply looking for something decorative to hang on their walls.

I do believe that the way forward is a re-engagement with the familiar. By familiar I mean traditional media, oil and watercolour, etc, and traditional subjects, landscape, portraiture, etc. But a painting should not simply be a demonstration of painterly skill. Within this context, the role of the artist – I believe – is to make the viewer re-examine and re-evaluate the subject matter. The apparent familiarity is the tool which persuades the viewer to consider the artwork in the first place (instead of dismissing it out of hand, the “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like” syndrome). But it then needs to take the viewer further. Above all else, it needs to build the expectation that the viewer will find future work interesting – and worth the bother of going to see!