“we would have known and surely would have predicted that the General Motors of the art world – the museums and universities – would ultimately seek to alleviate their post-market status and control the means of production … Within 10 years, stuff the art world was on its way to becoming a transnational bureaucracy. Everybody had a job description and a résumé … I was face to face with a generation of well-educated and expensively trained young artists whose extended tenure in art schools appended to the art world had totally divorced them from any social reality beyond it.”
David Hickey quoted in Gordon Burn try ,1921975, buy 00.html” title=”Make it new”>’Make it New’ Guardian October 14th 2006
Hickey is talking about the 1970’s in America but just as we have lagged behind our unweildly offspring in so many things since WWII – armaments, planning, social movements, music so too we have lagged in Art Education. Hickey’s words are echoed by sculptor Richard Serra who called it ‘Floor and drawer art’ – referring to the fashion for conceptual, documentary and installation work. ‘Plus ca change’. Here we are in the late naughties playing catch-up again but this time the implications for an art-world on brink of overload are severe. What has this to do with the offspring of our munificent academies toting their ‘cutting-edge’ wares before us on a sunny evening at Angel Row? Well everything and nothing…..
To explain I have to tell you a little story……
Once upon a time there was an Irishman and an Englishman and they both dreamt of America….one ended up there studying at Yale with the same Richard Serra and one made it across from the hinterland of Birmingham on a Fullbright. What both of them ingested as well as a respect and understanding of American academic practices and art-scene was an understanding of the new world that was emerging. No more cosy provincial art-schools with their tired old life-drawing rooms and quaint practices. No they saw a golden vision of a big brash new world and they weren’t going to let the old feudalism dent their dreams. The history of post WWII propagandist use of art movements such as Pop and Abstract Expressionism as examples of ‘democratic American freedom’ is well written. Far more subtle and really only apparent now years later is the influence of the free-market on the art schools of Britain. In an unholy alliance academics with left-wing sympathies who were able to earn right-wing lifestyles found that the ‘freedoms’ of a free-market in education gave them prestige and their bosses higher turnover and profits. Locked together ‘Art Education’ and ‘Commerce’ factors danced like there was no tomorrow.
The Irishman was Michael Craig Martin and in his pivitol role at Goldsmiths he ushered in the YBA (Young British Artists) phenomenon. The other character in my story is John Newling of Trent University ( formerly Polytechnic). At Trent Newling has overseen a similar if less glamorous drive towards both improving standards and building the new University’s reputation in the arts. It is the nature of what that built upon that I am interested in..those words of Hickey and Serra came back to haunt me as I moved around the Angel Row in the evening sunlight……are we witnessing the evening shadows lengthening on the day in the sun promised by the YBA circus…I think we are…..
As a student Trent had already a growing reputation, Goldmiths too but nobody could have predicted the sea-change in the arts that they have overseen. At Hornsey College in 1980’s I witnessed a full scale attack on the bourgeoise notions of craftsmanship, artistic talent and skill as ‘new arts’ performance, installation and digital swept all before them ..this a full 5 years before YBA’s. The students of the 1970’s had prospered and brought their own practice to the art school corridors..out with the old and in with the new. In the art critical wilderness voices opposed to this turn around were berated as hopelessly conservative..Peter Fuller who had started his published life on a left-wing press was berated as a closet fascist. The art-war was over…progress had won and as the numbers of students swelled ( fuelled partly by a government which had become a dab-hand at closing down all else especially manufacturing) and the money flowed in and the old ‘Polys’ blossomed into cathedrals of light and regenerated beauty who could argue? In Nottingham’s case the University actually built a new business school on the site of the old Raleigh factory. There was never a better time to be an artist and the YBA cash cows were the icing on the cake……..things could only get better and better…couldn’t they?
20 years on and the cracks in the facade have started to appear. The new Unis have been very succesful for those lucky enough to be within their privileged walls..and increasingly the proportion of ‘overseas’ students is climbing in direct relation to the falling numbers of U.K. students unable to navigate the fees fiasco or convince their parents that the art lottery worth playing. Meanwhile the Further Education colleges take up the old boring mundane training duties for ‘real work’ the hairdressers and bricklayers who would have trained on the job in the old days. It not only the working class feeling the pinch as Grayson Perry noted even the middle-classes beloved of Blair are examining the fine print carefully these days before committing their hard earned cash. The art-world today has been transformed and here the nub of my story……what we seeing is a generation of ‘Floor and Drawer’ artists….our clean, bright lovely ‘New Professionals’ who could have easily gone into medicine, architecture or been vets…the art-world has been ‘scrubbed up’ for the naughties..it had to be to carry on…anarchists, hairies, yippes of old need not apply…..solid artworks and intellectual rigour only…if it is weird it is safe ‘weird’. Which brings me back to my reverie in the late sun in the soon to be ‘upgraded and cleansed’ Angel Row. Where has all the fun gone..the anarchy, the dare I say it ‘revolution’ and as for ‘social reality..you ‘avin a larf guv’nor?………..
Oh dear am I being too old-fashioned for you dear reader?
Parade 3: Curated by Leo Fitzmaurice (who incidently has some fairly slight squibs on supermarket posters in the entrance) is the final act in the three-ring circus that was Parade – an attempt to showcase the brightest and most ‘urgent’ art from the sunny East Midlands.
In concept it draws on a large amount of networking events and in-house collaboration between artists chosen because they already ‘performing’ across the ‘Critical Network’ i.e. a post degree infrastructure that effectively promotes more of the same and excludes just about everybody else from the show. Imagine a Circus tent that pitched up in town and when you arrived 90% of the acts were clowns and when asked ‘where are the horses and elephants and even the jugglers’ you were told sorry by official decree only the clowns can take part the rest have been deemed too ‘reactionary, conservative or just too old’. The factors causing this state of affairs are tedious and would take a book to explain but art as instrument of social policy, art as regeneration symbol, art as education and most importantly artists under 30 as keys to unlocking European Funding have all played their part. Factor-in a developing network of self-promoting across the land and you have a virtual ‘alternative art scene’ but is it ? What is mind-numbing about this series of shows is how ‘safe’ it really is and how old-fashioned it all looks. The new underground drinks lattes, shops at Muji and uses their arts council grants as deposits on houses…capitalism must be quaking in its boots. One artist ( the oldest in show of course) actually has a thread of the real rebel in him and it shows.
Another reviewer noted the air of ‘inconsequantiality’ about this third show and he nailed it. This is Sunday supplement wannabe art. It affects an air of defiant rebelliousness but it no more real than a Peter Docherty ‘poem’ or Tracy Emin Sunday column. Art has been divorced from its social setting and artists starved for years of funds and attention are more than happy to dance to the piper’s tune. In an area like the East Midlands where there virtually no private sales system that means Academia and Subsidy…….they are all on A&S (the medical overtone there correct) without it most would have withered on the vine years ago or got proper jobs. So what is ‘Joe Public’ (conspicuous by his absence of course) to make of this Parade in his name?
I could list every artist’s name but for a fuller overview please read Mark Patterson’s incisive account in the Nottingham Evening Post (which incidently in response to public clamour for art coverage recently reduced said coverage by half in order to print more dating ads…). I am just going to give my honest appreciation of the work as it shown. I know only one participant and that is Paul Matosic whose floor piece of dismembered computer parts got a a thumbs up from Mark Patterson and which I agree is a highlight of the show. Another piece which caught my eye immediately was Hessing’s assemblage of multiplugs…concise and a formally inventive and clever piece that had real ‘sculptural’ precsence. In the same room Godfrey’s magazine excerpts were Foundation level smartypants, ( ditto Davis …so you took these symbols of capitalism and contemporanity…and you ‘broke them down” …..how exciting……..) Jamieson’s envelopes were a good joke…Sol Lewitt for the poor? Ayling and Conroy I leave to an anonymous comment I ‘overheard’ …” art for the front page of Frieze only it will never make it’…..it looked like Jeff Koons on a bedsit budget… if they’d aimed lower like the neatly formulated ’96 tears and 96 eyes’ they could have got frontpage of A.R. publicity literature instead. One thing I cannot fault though is the premise of lo-fi, reusing objects as defined by the overall curation….it is stuff and sometimes it is happening but mostly it isn’t.
Stuff that could have enjoyed development included Stevenson’s signage…nicely done and could progress, Hessing’s ‘re-modulations’ and maybe Fisher’s other work although HAL was a bit too pop culture referential to have any real bite but full marks for a laddy reinvestigation of traditional laddette materials. Kirshnir’s morse code was a good idea badly presented.
Stuff that emphatically, ‘oh god why bother’ didn’t happen for me and quite a few others, included Gubb’s amplifier…yawn….and Danica Maier’s soft (literally lace..but from abroad…not Nottingham you understand…) pornographic cartoon. Nothing trembling there. By coincidence the two most lethargic entrants have the academic seal of approval….and if Norman and Mayer continue like this they will soon join them.
Stuff Happens..was sort of Ok in a five out of ten way….to return to the vegetable metaphors then this was more like a street barrow at 5pm on a Saturday and whilst most of it was well past sell-by date intellectually ( pace 1970’s and 1980’s conceptualism and assemblage) there were some still fresh bargains to be had and at least the curator/barrow boy tried to showcase as much as possible…i.e. throw enough against wall some sticks ….rest flog it cheap mate..
So what does any of that have to do with the first part of this extended ‘rant’ or ‘diagnosis’ depending on your age/social background and access to those barrow boys and girls of benevolence….A.C.E.?
Well members of the jury my prognosis is simple. What has happened with our art education system is directly reflected in the quality and the depth of the work these artists display. Too many older artists in the East Midlands have tried to reinvent themselves in recent years to gain access to these charmed circles and in doing so have jettisoned any credibility and development for a handful of silver. Amongst the younger artists the ‘wow factor teaching’ has left them polishing old ideas in ever decreasing circles and now ever decreasing funding. The golden eggs are no longer going to be dished out for fourth rate art and I’m afraid the only gold will be hanging around athletes necks. The system of professionalisation has left us with a glut of pretentious semi-curators with more and more artists of variable talents to ‘curate’. Academia is the ‘safe-house’ where the avant-garde can sleep safely and all the while the ‘social reality’Â remains a late-night bus ride away. There was not one reference in any of this work to the actual area of the East Midlands. That ‘social reality’ simply didn’t exist. The ivory towers have not got any taller ..they have just got thicker walls.
Once upon a time there was an Irishman,an Englishman and a Scotsman and they dreamt of America…they dreamt of revolution. of turning the world upside down…where is Tom Paine or Burns when you need him most?
To quote a singer in a band..Jefferson I think we’re lost…..
All we have now after the Parade has passed are a handful of beans and a golden goose….oh and a lovely, lovely square…
Editor’s note: Apologies to Alexander Stevenson for an honest mistake re. his and Kirshnir’s work. In the speed of writing I mistakenly assigned his (positive) mention with Kirshnir. This has now been rectified and a heartfelt apology to both. My only defence is it a genuine mistake and my incredible age. Even with proof-reading sometimes things slip through. Amended version now online.
Hello Moogee(t.a.d.),
I very much enjoyed reading your article (no really, I did), I have always liked the articles that berate and cast down the wannabe ‘second coming(s)’, as opposed to providing an educated spiel about the ‘meaning’ of placing a watermelon on a filing cabinet…
I was just wondering why, having mauled several of the young (and to a lesser extent the older) PARADE artists with such gusto, I was left completely unmentioned?
I assure you I am not merely grovelling to get my name in print. I simply wondered why some of the questions (that you nailed your condemnation to the door of Angel Row with) were not answered by examining the work’s themselves.
Example:
“There was not one reference in any of this work to the actual area of the East Midlands.â€
Well, not to blow my own trumpet, but the repaired sign fragments on show in Parade were all from the streets of Nottingham and it’s suburbs, and thus the fragmented words are fragments of NOTTINGHAM’s recent past. You had but to ask…
This isn’t just me being facetious, I just think you may want to look a little closer before you decry the entire region’s under thirties! Cull this generation and start again with a new batch, innocent of the world and it’s corrupting influence…? Personally half-arsed twaddle that is wrapped up in it’s attempt at “anarchy†or “revolution†(your words) bores me senseless.
Also, do I understand correctly, that you believe that art making shouldn’t be a profession? Sure it’s noble to suffer and even starve as an artist (we’ve all lived the cliché), but if you want to have art in the next ten years that doesn’t come from flagellants and whelps, you really have to treat the artist as member of the human race, and dare I say it: someone who contributes to an international economy. What exactly is the contribution you are trying make?
But anyway, I was a little saddened that I didn’t feature under the “Lethargic entrants†comment, but I am still interested to hear your opinion on my work?
To conclude: Parade, though not as ground-shaking or ‘shocking’ as perhaps you are used to, attempts to demonstrate the ‘seed-bed’ of regional artists that are finally beginning to gain national and international recognition. I don’t remember reading in the contract, that the work I make has to please the local ‘Greenberg-wannaby‘, who is trying to preach ‘the new order’! But by all means, take the next batch from NTU and raise them in the ways of Moogee(t.a.d.). You can have ‘anarchic’ artworks for the downstairs loo, and you can feed the remaining artists on the bodies of those who weren’t “shocking†or “whacky†enough.
Thankyou for an erudite and mistake-free response. Perhaps you should become a critic:-)
I will respond in length elsewhere but you raise some interesting points and so far are the only artist to take time and effort to respond to my ‘cull’ as you quaintly put it. For that I applaud you.
A couple of points. When I referred to ‘anarchy’ and ‘revolution’ I meant in a true and probably unobtainable sense and meant ground-breaking and radical as used to be before the marketing men took over the art-world and we are asked to treat work like Creed’s latest ‘Sick Video’ as somehow A)interesting and B) radical…of which it is neither.
As for the ‘finally beginning to gain national and international recognition’ I’d say wait ten years and tell me that for now there too much hype and not enough substance and I was attacking the frothier coffees in the ‘new art coffee shop’ mostly and have already apologised for mistake which had actually assigned you to a stronger brew status…as for being Nottingham ‘fragments’ no it was not obvious and I worked on information I received. In fact that note reinforces my opinion of your work as substantially better than most on display.
As for raising the next generation with barking in the ears there more chance of men landing on Jupiter but you may have caught my drift. The review of Parade is part of a larger manifesto and sometimes a bit of sacred cow culling can open up the debate. The art debate has been skewed ever since Goldsmith’s invented artists making money (allegedly) and the goal-posts have been shifted unfairly in my opinion and I just trying to right the leaky boat somewhat. To do that sometimes you have to lean a little more in the opposite direction to stop the whole dam thing sinking and allow ALL the passengers to reach dry land.
Parade was guilty of favouritism and displaying just one artistic narrative for the East Midlands and in process missed a lot of worthy but not trendy work . I bark on behalf of those excluded and in eternal hope of a more open and non-exclusive patronage for all. Not just Trent graduates….
If that was to happen then Nottingham would have a more equal and in my opinion a far healthier art-scene that may just attract that International Art World it so busy trying to court. Provincial postmods are the same the world over ……true talent is bigger than short termism and I sincerely hope you are one and not the other….
p.s. ‘Greenberg Wannabie’…I take that as a huge compliment although the ‘new order’ jibe is distasteful and maybe you should consider where that phrase comes from before bandying it around. How many graduates read Greenberg these days……let alone Heron or Fuller. Please do not fall into the knee-jerk ‘anything not with us is against us and a fascist’ response…leave that to the metropolitan muppets.
as for ‘artists as professionals’ that needs a whole page response in time……..
It’s difficult to know how to respond to something when it is so dismissive of your work. I was just wondering (hoping) you might be prepared to offer your thoughts or interpretation as to what you think I may have been trying to do and say with that piece in the exhibition? This is out of a genuine interest for your interpretation and not simply a disgruntled challenge to extend wider debates around funding, academia, old verses new, being an artist over 30 (which I am) etc.
I have invited Mark to participate in the Moogee led debate and I hope he accepts… we can always discuss individual practice after the debate! I hope both the wider and narrower issues can be covered but time may not allow.
I will respond here to his particular works – Scooby Dead’ and ‘It’s Alive’ in due course if only to prove that I did have some some inkling what the work intended before ignoring it in context of wider review (Scooby)and ‘yawning’ at ‘It’s Alive’.
Helpfully Mark has told us what the video about on his informative website. I glad that academia thinks Moogee’s little kennel worth visiting occasionally.
Moogee
Mr. S Mark Gubb is a feted artist. He has had a fairly slow but steady rise through the artworld ranks of U.K. Championship and may even crossover fairly soon to the Premiereship and who knows may even receive the blessing of Saatchi himself. For now he showcases in many ways the characteristics of many of the things I think have gone wrong with the post Brit Art art teaching and artworld.
I apologise to Mark as he not personally being singled out but he has responded and asked for a reply. I do not have a personal vendetta against him or any of our local artists but it does seem he has become the lightning conductor in this case.
I ‘yawned’ at his piece ‘It’s Alive’ not because I was some rather out of touch viewer who casually dismisses all modern art as rubbish. My position has been reached over 25 years of almost constant involvement with both the musical and artworlds of this blessed land.
I have seen artists come and go and the repressive and limiting definitions of art take hold which I believe work like Mark’s has come to represent. Maybe subconsciously that is why I left out the video piece in first review and ‘dismissed’ it in this review although ‘yawning’ is hardly up there with scathing and abusive. I simply felt it was a lazy gesture from an artist who has made some interesting pieces and some not so interesting pieces.
The work fits firmly into a style I have see since college almost three decades back. I would call it ‘academy conceptualism’ that has all but removed other art practices from our ‘cutting-edge’ academies. The shame of this is that more and more often works ape previous works and strive for a false ‘shock value’ or ‘intellectual veracity’ they hardly ever can uphold. For a contemporary version I’d suggest Martin Creed’s ‘Sick Videos’.
I simply do not find this kind of work interesting or satisfying. I was born into a working-class family in middle England in 1959 and am lucky to have seen more than one version of the art world and frankly I believe an awful number of babies have been thrown out with the bath water since. I explain these positions in depth elsewhere on this blog.
Mr.Gubb is educating our next generation of cutting-edge art warriors and I am curious to know what he is teaching them…what skills he is imparting to them apart from the cliches of French Philosophy dragged through a Bitish lens. I hold to the quaint notion that artworks require skill both physically and mentally. I am in no doubt that whatever ‘interpretation’ I fix on Mr.Gubb’s ampilfier art he can make it look as if I cannot comprehend his intention with a few choice quotes if he wishes. I am not interested in whatever notions of popular displacement, ennui, 21st century angst, irony, youth culture sociology or Derridaesque conceptualism and whatever else we can glean from a handbook for media studies it may supposedly incorporate. I am interested in the piece as a (quaint again) ‘piece of art’ to view.
‘It’s Alive’ is an old two-part amp and stack much beloved of all manner of bands but from reading Mr.Gubb’s website it obviously tinged with memories of the artist’s ‘mythical’ hinterland of West Midlands heavy metal and blues scene. So far so good. I like music too and I even met a fellow in a jobcentre( he was interviewing me) who regaled me with stories of Phil Lynott and Ozzy Osbourne in Nottingham. Fine it passed the time but I didn’t turn it into art. Mr.Gubb does and by far the best of his ‘output’ is driven and works with ‘folk’ memory and community concepts. I wish he worked harder on this part as I really think in pieces like Window at Angel Row with its boarded up pubs photographs he touched on some interesting material and dare I say it originality.
This work comes out of a ‘scene’ that revolves around Grizedale, Artist’s Newsletter and the growing network of ‘artist’s led orgs’. It has done well from the last ten years of grant money and may even survive the downturn in arts spending although all bets off on that now.
This work is derived from a post-Duchampian notion of art through 60’s Fluxus and 70’s sociological and pranksterism conceptualism that has now come to define what art ‘is’. Looking at a Trent Fine Art Degree show catalogue from 2001 one will hardly find any previous versions of art. John Newling is our king Conceptualist here and Gubb’s work looks like the work of a talented Prince in the same court.
It is this crushing of alternatives I object to..that and the false intellectualisation of art teaching and with it the de-skilling of the practitioners whatever their chosen genres.
‘It’s Alive’ as a piece was boring in the context of Mr.Gubb’s work itself and I’m sorry but as someone who been part of music world too an old amp is not interesting in a gallery location. Added to that is the musical loop it plays of 1234/1234/1234…..well yes and….what does that say?Is it a magnificent and cutting observation of the hundreds of pub bands out there in the wild midlands folkland? Is it a comment on mass-consumerism and artistic replication amongst the populace. Does it comment on Americanisation of the British body politic and postwar UK decline?
(Mr.Gubb’s website is full of arch pop cultural referencing e.g. Johnny Cash, Ozzy, Heavy metal)
No it’s just a bloody amp and stack with a loop which would do for Angel Row….so what….
With the website (informative and amusing in a rock fan way) it makes more sense. Indeed I found the web page for the piece better than the gallery work. So there you go I am not out to destroy any reputations I just thought that piece did not work and was boring in context of a room full of other artworks.
As for Scooby Dead the explanation (again on website) is fullsome and I cannot add much apart from the technique has been used before and I don’t think the viewers really read the work in the way intended as signifying or generating notions of children’s perceptions of violence. On a simple technical level it didn’t quite work but that could just be a technical problem or a problem with way it sited in that show.
Mr. Gubb is a talented artist working in the academic style (he teaches at Trent). My opinions will not derail his magnificent progress but I do have the right to voice an opinion from outside the walls of academia and the Arts Council which are so impressed by this kind of work.
As an artist he is more Prog Rock than Punk and as I have a studded dog collar I will always favour Punk directness over work that needs an ‘explanation’.
If the work could actually unwrap some more of that folk culture it plays with it may actually release some interesting solutions. At present it is air-guitar soloing to the academy and the gallery…not to the audience…..and we all know what happens to bands who lose their audience.
p.s. One of Mr. Gubb’s earliest shows (2000) called Flatlands he actually showed paintings…..here’s one…no guitar’s to be seen….I don’t think he will be returning to the brush any time soon..now that is ironic 🙂
To see S Mark Gubb art go to
http://www.smarkgubb.com/
Thank you for your comments. First of all I can assure you that I won’t be making any choice quotes to rubbish your opinion. I can’t abide people who hide boring work behind theory and other people’s criticism (when I encounter this I find myself feeling like I do when Jehovah’s Witnesses quote the bible at me; a default position of victory, for them, because they know the text much better than I would ever be interested to). You make reference to my website at various points in your response and if you trawled the site with a fine tooth comb (I’m not suggesting you would want to), you’ll find not a single reference to any theorist; just personal opinion about what I’m trying to do with a piece of work and why I think its worth doing. Criticism and theory are both interesting and essential, but are certainly not the be all and end all of an interesting practice.
Whilst I teach at Trent (something which you appear to hold against me as an artist), I am far from an academic (as my one day a week, term by term, non-permanent contract will attest to). I find the job enjoyable and satisfying and like to think that what I can offer the students is an analytical perspective on their work, developed through a personal fine art practice I’ve been lucky enough to exhibit, along with any insight I have gleaned in my struggle to establish a professional practice for myself. As you are very aware, it’s bloody hard work trying to make a living out of something that everyone has the right to opine about, where most doors are locked firmly shut and, let’s face it, is not particularly important to anyone other than those involved it. So if I can offer any little insight in to how I have kept my limbs intact whilst wandering, clueless, through the minefield of the ‘art world’, I am more than happy to do so.
In reference to my work, I am particularly interested in your line ‘an artist who has made some interesting pieces and some not so interesting pieces’. To this, I would heartily agree. I’ve often used the analogy that looking at my work is like flicking through the channels on your TV; some of what you see will be good, some will be bad, some will interest some people and not others, but it’s all TV (art). I know TV isn’t the best analogy in this instance as there may be a temptation to dismiss TV as dross (along with my work) but it is exactly that, an analogy.
So, to deal with the intentions of this piece (don’t worry, no philosophy or theory coming) I’d simply say that it comes from my ongoing interest in (re)interpreting the culture I know and have grown up in. I grew up in a small seaside town, I was a teenager through the 80’s and my cousin got me in to Iron Maiden when I was eight years old. Those three things will go further to explaining that work than anything you might find on a library shelf.
The title comes from a Ramones album; a classic album recorded in London. Whether people get this or not is irrelevant, but it’s there to be got if they do. What’s playing through the amp is that album, with all of the music removed, leaving just the bits inbetween the songs when Dee Dee Ramone screams ‘1,2,3,4’ (meaning that every three minutes or so, the amp bursts in to life and blasts ‘1,2,3,4’ at you). The physical experience of the work is the most important thing. It is very much about being in the room with the work (it could never work in a book, on a website, as a video/documentation etc.) It is loud. I grew up obsessed with Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and my musical Mecca of the Midlands. In that split second when the amp bursts to life, it shocks people (though not for shock value) and gets the blood racing; something reminiscent of that glorious moment at your first ‘proper’ gig when the band takes the stage and the music kicks in. You feel alive. Also, it’s playing through a Marshall stack (something which has become as much of an icon as many of the bands who have used them), alluding to that magical teenage feeling/misbelief, ‘If I had a Marshall amp and a Les Paul, I could play like Jimmy Page.’ No you couldn’t. It’s a dream. But it’s a good one.
Whether people get these references is clearly up for debate, but I resent the insinuation that the work is being clever, or academic; it’s an honest representation born of a life long passion for music and a burning self-loathing that I never achieved my dreams as a musician (etched in to my eternally damned soul long before art ever swung in to view).
Having been to art school I will admit that I like Fluxus, I like conceptualism. I even like some of the YBA’s. But when you say:
It is this crushing of alternatives I object to..that and the false intellectualisation of art teaching and with it the de-skilling of the practitioners whatever their chosen genres.
I would agree. Everything has its place, and everything should be encouraged, whether that be boring old painting or exciting new video, but I am also of the belief that teaching someone how to weld makes a metalworker, not an artist. Everyone in art school should be made aware of the range of media that are available to them and encouraged in whatever field they feel most appropriate, but it’s their ability to figure out why they want to make a huge metal sculpture and whether it’s the most effective and relevant medium to express their idea, which is important.
I’ll shut up now as I feel like I’ve gone on long enough (and I’ve had a busy day deskilling the next generation of tax burdens) but as for being more Prog Rock than Punk, I am loathed to admit you may be right. Never once have I been told that I look like Sid Vicious, however comparisons to Rik Wakeman have been many.
Many thanks for a well written and no-theoretical reply 🙂 I approve of your insistence on the passionate roots of your work and as a feeble guitarist and non-singer see exactly where you are comin from ( my hope was to become Tom Waits …I’m still trying:-).
If only more people like yourself could storm the walls of academia maybe things would be going in the right direction.
Apologies if seemed anti-academic but five years as a ‘minion’ (their words) at Oxford University did not help. I like your point about welder and large sculpture but some colleges have made changes in pursuit of ‘throughput’ and cost effectiveness in which the wider range of arts media have been cut back.
The life rooms, print rooms and large scale sculpture facilities all losing out in pursuit of profit. No doubt digital media has changed the options but too many departments saw that as a trojan horse for making sweeping changes …my babies in their bath water analogy. How far Trent can be tarred with that brush I don’t know I was not singling Trent out just making wider observations.
I trust you did not deskill too many on your art shift and that the future generations are safe for a few more weeks.
I do hope some of your students are made aware of the Arts Council Debate on 24th May because it will impinge directly on their chosen careers.
Also I did get Ramones reference but didn’t want to betray what an old Punk I was 🙂
A really nice explanation and perhaps you might add it to the ‘It’s Alive’ web page I’m sure it would help people. Would that more artists explained themselves as clearly when challenged rather than hiding behind clouds of Derrida and Foucault. For me The Ramones an equally coherant philosophical base and a hell of a lot more attractive.
This website was set up to generate debate not stifle it and I hope more people will read this and comment too.