Modern Masterpieces for Nothing
In the week that London has become the art capitalism capital according to the newspapers Moogee takes great pride in unveiling a cheap alternative. Yes in DIY capital U.K. where the B&Q managers are rubbing their hands over their Flood spend bonuses Moogee is proud to offer every householder their very own version of Classic British Modern Masterpieces. The Mini Modern Masterpieces range will be the envy of friends and neighbours and give you a cachet in the International Art World you could never have dreamt of.Â
First up how to own a Gormley (current sculpture will set you back £187, malady 200 in February at Sothebys) without re-mortgaging the house. First buy a pack of Jelly babies. Secondly select an orange one for rust coloured effect and place on a table top. Place head at table top level and pretend you are far away. There you are!( Top tip add Nice biscuit and have your own Angel of the North!)Â
Second Modern Masterpiece – Rachel Whiteread ( auction record £288, sale 000 and a student of Mr. Gormely at Slade). In homage to her Tate installation. Purchase a box of sugar cubes and place inside an empty shoe box. Voila your own Blue Peter recreation of a modern masterpiece! Moogee will source more Modern Masterpieces for the nation in the months to come.
Todays final offering is a tribute to Dame Tracey Emin (no gong in the honour’s list yet but sells Neons for a measly £20, sovaldi 000 each and ‘drawings’ for a bargain £3,600) surely it only a matter of time before the greatest living female artist is rewarded for her scintillating cutting edge..umm what was her Venice show ..oh yes..her Times Postcard said it all ..it was how she would imagine O’Levels if she’d ever taken an exam….Moogee is saying nothing her words speak volumes. Her partying and dancing seemed somehow more substantial than her inept watercolours and boring neons could ever be. To replicate this artistic feast Moogee suggests you tear a few pages out of an Egon Schiele Taschen book and chuck a few Joseph Beuys drawings in for good luck as for the neon simply scribble some irrelevant quotes on a piece of paper in day-glo felt tip and there ya go a tribute to the U.K. Pavilion in no time. Yet another Mini Modern Masterpiece to enjoy in your own home….this time with an international seal of approval..to suggest that her prices will rise because of the Biennale is of course foolish beyond words.
One artist Moogee cannot offer a mini masterpiece of sadly is David Hockney ( painting record price £2.6 million ). Sir David (surely he deserves it as much as Mr. McKellen and others) is simply too complicated, erudite and dare we suggest it ‘good’ to be compressed into a mini format. His latest landscape painting at the Royal Academy offers a pointed contrast to the foregoing artworks in that he actually engaging with ‘brain, hand and eye’ as he put it.
Such notions are hard to compress into sound bites, photo opportunities and general spin. Maybe our new PM will spark a spot of honesty in politics and that will infect the body art too..
Moogee says it long overdue.Â
this an excerpt from debate on Guardian…
Jonathan Jones doesn’t deserve some of the more ridiculous responses he has received on his Guardian Blog but at the same time he hardly warrents being called a critical colossus on the Angel of the North scale either.
I regard Gormley’s career as being more an exemplar of the power of privileged education and background in these isles than an example of cutting edge (whatever that) significance. With a rich-kids glee he has showered our countryside with reproductions of himself which in parts ok but reeling off acres of pseudo-philosophical justifications for this sculptural navel-gazing is another thing.
Mr. Jones (and I cannot resist bringing in a quip alluding to the Dylan song here) does know some of what is going on and he is using his status as a Guardian paragon of virtue (I suspect) to poke the dear reader with some good old critical slash and burn. I can forgive this but for his demoting Moore to third-rate Picasso. Moore represents a hell of a lot more about the development of U.K. modernism and how the art world and its possibilities have radically altered in the last 5o years(could a ‘working-class’ man of Moore’s stature (pace Hockney) exist again and are we in for more and more Gormleys?). These matters are far more interesting than tittle-tattle and pot-shotting.
More erudition and less slipshod pseudo-criticism please Mr.Jones and if you want to see how it really done check out my blog below….I can snipe, slash, burn AND offer erudition…
Sniping is worthwhile if the target worthy and a potshot at a Gormley sculpture could be a fun way to spend a weekend. Maybe funfairs should have booths for air-rifling his clay figures..
Perhaps Me and Mr. Jones could arrange that…
 read full Blog debate at
Leave a Reply