macro & micro

I found last night’s “Where is Modern Art Now?”, on the BBC, heartening. Gus Casely-Hayford (GC-H) explored the position of the current art scene during the recession and post YBA celebrity bling.

He asked: ‘Where do you go when being provocative is old-hat?’. Whilst viewing a show in a Peckham car-park of work by recent graduates, he was shocked at not being shocked.

He interviewed Michael Landy whose work has dramatically changed since ‘Breakdown’ which involved destroying all his possessions. After publicly destroying himself, what direction could his work take? He started to make delicate etchings of weeds and has recently been drawing portraits. He has turned to quieter pieces. Apparently even Damien Hirst is painting in oils again (isn’t that a bit messy for him?).

On attending the Goldsmiths MA show GC-H was underwhelmed. He thought it was work you could definitely hang on your dining room wall, modest and institutionalised. He stated: “I’m disappointed with this show, ambitions have been stunted by the recession … this is in the shadow of the all-powerful YBAs. The market should come to the artist not the other way round.”

I was particularly struck by the work and philosophy of Whitney McVeigh who at 40 is only now being recognised. Her work is governed by process rather than the ‘big idea’, she explained: “It’s about arriving at a point which has gathered itself over a long period of time.” (Which sounded like me talking.) To GC-H she is ” … a quiet voice after a noisy decade.”

The process of making is clearly admired these days. Grayson Perry’s astute comments distinguished between the making of ‘art’ with that of ‘craft’. He explained: “you can teach craft …’ One remark which made me laugh: “Jackson Pollock was very good at dripping, whereas in the field of painting, he was rubbish”. So ‘technical ability’ is important to Grayson – maybe a throw-away comment because Pollock developed his complex technique over a long period. This is something I’ve had to deal with as I’m dripping a lot recently …

Whilst talking of visual pleasure, Grayson said: “I want to titillate the neurones … we undervalue the visual.” His pots are beautiful; thankfully these days it seems that the term is not used in a derogatory way.

GC-H concluded: “The art scene is alive and well. Artists think about technique and history … artists are less brash than their predecessors … they like the idea of practice … I want art to produce challenges, not be just another form of entertainment … and back in touch with materials. “

He ended with an appraisal of the work of Tom Price – beautiful miniature busts of heads, alluding to anthropological images regarding race. The aspect that appealed to GC-H was that his work required real thought, you don’t get it instantly.

I am now fully inspired to get back to messing about in my studio with materials and encouraging beautiful surfaces to evolve.

I watched ‘The Art on your wall’ on BBC2 last night and it raised some interesting points. Sue Perkins approached the subject as a typical home-owner who wants to decorate her house with pictures.

She made a distinction between artists who make art to decorate walls and artists who make art for galleries. So, which category do I fall in to?

When I started making videos I thought to myself: ‘now I’m a real artist, nobody can buy my work!’. However, I still paint and people do still buy my work even though the subject is the Holocaust – this does surprise me, but the inspiration and origin of the work is not that obvious to everybody. On the surface, my work is about texture, colour and repetitive forms; on one level one of my blue paintings could easily adorn somebody’s lounge wall because it matches their sofa. Does this demean the work?

Sue Perkins interviewed members of the public in Ikea buying Klimt prints, their reasons? They liked the colours. The content of the work was not important to them – it became merely decoration.

Clearly there are many different art worlds – even Jack Vettriano admitted he could not be compared to Bacon and Freud. What did strike me as odd though was that he believed that his work was so popular because it demonstrated great skill (maybe at A’Level in my opinion), he continued to say that skill is not evident in recent graduates work which, in his opinion, is only concerned with how to shock Britain.

Where does this leave me? Do I make work for the gallery elite? That doesn’t please me either. So, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to make work for myself, hopefully no integrity will be lost.

Let’s open a can of worms – comments invited.

http://www.jonathan-moss.com/