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Lars Bang Larsen’s discussion of visual art extends beyond new sites and contexts to ask questions of how art meets the idealogical spaces of politics and mass media – and how behaviour has become aesthetic.
Jenny Holzer, who re-shaped public art with a propagandist touch, once stated that "We live in an over-informed but action-weak society". Tibor Kalman, executive of the design company M&Co, who curated Holzer's truism billboard series for the Times Square redevelopment in 1992, held much the same view: "We need to be shocked out of our complacency, out of our suburban lawns and swimming pools, in order to understand what's going on."1 Kalman's call-to-arms took place in a TV interview on the occasion of the scandalised reception of Benetton's Colors magazine, which he edited. If his political vision wasn't entirely in keeping with this corporate patronage, at least it was in tune with Benetton's controversial panache. Kalman was a declared socialist who churned out McLuhanesque slogans such as 'Consumer culture is an oxymoron', and made record covers for Talking Heads. He was also involved in contradictory activities such as gentrifying Manhattan's Lower East Side, organising art exhibitions and fundraising for charity. Now, some ten years later, art increasingly finds itself on the same terrain where the commercial 'arts' of advertising and graphic design have always operated as...
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