In 2010 I saw two fighter jets in an art gallery. One lay on its back, coming into contact with the floor at its nose, tail, and left wingtip. It had either been hyper-polished, or the panels had been replaced with chrome – so reflective was its surface that, if need be, I could have used it as a shaving mirror. The second had been buffed and repainted with feathers so barely visible as to have been unnoticeable at first, and it had been suspended from the ceiling by its tail so that its nosecone hung a foot above the gallery floor.
I was awestruck. Killing machines re-contextualised as decorative objects. Tools of war made, in the case of the prostrate Jaguar, hyperreal, and in the case of the feathered and hung Harrier, juxtaposed with nature.
More than once I heard visitors saying ‘I don’t get it’.
But get this, you don’t have to get it.
Sometimes art is a big philosophical hypothesis, other times it deals with politics, emotions, or death. It can be idiotic or profound, or both, and it can mean something entirely different to its creator than to every single one of its viewers.
Sometimes art is a spectacle, and that’s okay, too. Sometimes, the thing to get is no deeper than that it looks fucking awesome.
The gallery was Tate Britain. The artist was Fiona Banner
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