Blockbuster Exhibitions: Bad for Art

At last its finally over. The latest blockbuster exhibition (containing the grand total of six paintings) at the National Gallery, Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, has ended. It is with us no more, deceased, kaput, and I, for one, am glad. I am sure that my feelings over this event are not shared by the curators, the critics and many of those who went to see it (are they really 'art lovers' or 'scene' lovers?), people with a vested interest in these things, but I don't care (or, I care negatively) because I felt the disruption to the National Gallery as a whole was too much. I spent a week in London in early January, went to the NG on a Wednesday and was lucky to get my small bag into the cloakroom, what with there being a large queue of dusty and shifty people snaking from outside the Sainsbury's wing entrance to the ticket desk. OK, this is fine, I thought, I'll soon be upstairs enjoying the delights of the Renaissance rooms. Except that not all of the rooms were open and not for the reason of maintaining the collection but because there weren't enough room monitors available to secure every room. The staff who monitor the rooms have been in dispute with the gallery management because their numbers are to be cut leaving each monitor to keep watch over two rooms at a time. They naturally point out the problems this would cause, endangering the collection: they don't have eyes in the back of their heads, after all. Not being able to see the Florence and Netherlandish rooms was upsetting for me so I asked a monitor in another room about this. I was told that the Leonardo exhibition had taken resources away from the main collection. Thankfully I was staying until the Saturday and was able to go back to the NG late on the Friday when the gallery stays open later and has enough staff on hand so all the rooms were open. I could feast my eyes on Piero Della Francesca's Baptism of Christ and Hans Memling's The Donne Triptych. When an exhibition, by a master, I'll admit – but who I don't appreciate, I'm a Michelangelo fan – containing a pitiful amount of paintings, disrupts the overall running of the whole gallery, then something is not right.

The last blockbuster exhibition I went to at the National Gallery was the Velázquez event back in 2007/8, it was great, it was a show with many, many paintings and well worth it. But the space that they were shown in is just not right. The NG show these exhibitions in their basement galleries, they are small, dark and increasingly cramped rooms, and when with a crowd the viewing of paintings becomes ridiculous (for what its worth, what I did in that situation was to move to the later rooms in the exhibition and work backwards, that way I saw much of the art without having to shove aside some old person!). The National Gallery is not up to showing blockbuster exhibitions, that's obvious, but are any places suitable or are such events just bad for art?

Tate Modern is based in an old industrial power generating building, it has large, bright rooms within which to showcase the modernist art of the early 20th Century, a great place for blockbuster exhibitions, surely? As it happens, no. Its perfectly suited to showing its themed gallery artworks based around Flux, Energy, and Poetry and Dreams, but any blockbuster exhibition, like the Gauguin one they did in early 2011, is mobbed out with the hoards making the viewing almost impossible. It was the same with this winter's Gerhard Richter exhibition, though to a lesser extent; just too many people (like me, yes) crowding the place. We all know about the difficulties people had at the Gauguin exhibition, so with that in mind I proclaim that blockbuster exhibitions are not for art lovers but for the 'cool people', those out to show themselves as though they were the exhibition. Art is cool now and Damien Hirst is to blame, its because of him that everyone is interested in the old masters, because of him (and her, though I like her, she is, at least, authentic) that people want to be seen to be seeing traditional oil paintings. Again. End these blockbuster exhibitions, they're bad for art.

Too Much Theory Not Enough Art

I was going to write about two contemporary exhibitions I had been to recently, The Social Lives of Objects and POI: Moving, Mapping, Memory from Castlefield Gallery and Cornerhouse respectively, I had made some notes and was ready to start writing, but I couldn't do any: why? I was completely uninspired and underwhelmed by the two shows I had seen. This conclusion was initially hidden from me because I was caught up in the two exhibition's theorising, walking around the shows with a mind full of the intentions of the artists, and worse, the expectations of the curators. My aesthetic values are clearly different from the artists on show because I found no beauty in these exhibitions, I found the experiences akin more to an educational seminar than an aesthetic experience, one shouldn't have to think too much in order to appreciate, never mind enjoy, a piece of art. It seems that today's art privileges theory over artistic craftsmanship.

Yes, I am criticising the 'artistic skills' of these artists: one of the exhibitions resembled a car boot sale with random objects dotted about the place as though your grandparent's house had been ransacked, indeed one of the exhibits consisted of an old Penguin book (Old Book on a Wall) with the last page reconstructed from itself - trash. The other show was too earnest, trying to make the usual liberal political points, and for the second exhibition in a row the top floor gallery was given over (partially) to a animal den. Much of contemporary art is conceptual art now, the boundaries between the two are no more, and I'm sure its because of our modern sensibilities. As times pass humanity gets heavier with explanation, it occupies us more and our culture will reflect this fact.

And yet, for me, I find that the more I explain, look into, theorise, try to understand visual art, the further I find I am from the aesthetic experience. This, of course, was the first lesson I learnt in the Philosophical Aesthetics class I took when at university. There is always this tension between the theory and the art that comes from it, but a gallery should never make you feel like you are in a classroom.

Manuel Saiz: Private Party. Keep Out.

Manuel Saiz: Private Party. Keep Out.
Castlefield Gallery
06 February 2009 to 22 March 2009
Wednesday – Sunday 1 - 6 pm

Sometimes I come away from 'contemporary exhibitions' asking myself 'was that art?', 'what is art, anyway?', and so on, often to escape the empty response generated by the exhibition just viewed, but here these questions, and a few more, are central to this exhibition by Manuel Saiz. It makes for a strange experience, of repetitive suggestions brought on by various short film installations, a plaque and a flow chart. Questions, suggestions, this is an exhibition of first principals, it asks a question of art itself.

What is art? The piece What is Art Flowchart is literal being what it says it is, and by asking the question it demands a response. What is art? that's easy to know, isn't it? Naturally, though, there are many answers, almost as many as there are people who would answer the question. We are confronted with one question, three possible answers and many different consequences to your own definition of art depending on the choices you make. So what is art? Objects? People? or maybe circumstances? Already I'm not happy: why am I restricted? couldn't 'art' be whatever 'the artist' says it is? Find me someone self-declared as an artist, let them point to art, then all we have to do is ask ourselves: is this art any good? But that's not a question of first principals, it asks a value judgement. It is much more difficult to be forced to decide not only what art is but who the artist is too.

Who is the artist? A self-declared one, as Joseph Beuys may or may not have said. Anyone can be an artist, and I have no problem with such a proposition, but there are some institutions that do care who the artist is, who do want to demarcate the lines between those inside art and those outside it, self-perpetuating institutions who suffocate...........our fundamental needs? Maybe we can accept that everyone has a potential to be an artist, that its part of the human condition, a fundamental need, but who opens the door and lets the artist in? In a way the title of this exhibition prompts that last question, pointing to those self-perpetuating institutions that define 'art' for us, telling us to 'come in' or to 'go away'. As the exhibition brochure says in relation to the piece Pride: "The phrase on the plaque (Manuel Saiz proudly supports Galeria Moriarty) refers to an economic relationship and social structure encouraging us to reflect upon the context in which contemporary art is produced and consumed."

There are aesthetic moments too. The video installations Social Sculptures (everybody is an artist) and The Two Teams Team are contrived enough for the viewer to see that an artist's hand has been at work. Indeed with Social Sculptures we get from the three actors involved something akin to performance art, and that because of the repetitive nature of the video we enter into surreal moments that are quite funny: absurd moments brought on by the nonsensical repetitions of various statements: 'everybody is an artist'; 'anyone can be an artist'; 'no one is an artist'; and so on, accompanied by happy/sad, fearful/angry, emotions. Repeating anything over and over, either visual or literal, muddies the comprehensible waters, but it also brings in the thought that memory is essential for knowledge, to know what you are doing means that you remember. Related is the ancient Greek word mimesis, which means 'to represent', one copies, and one remembers in order to copy: if anyone can be an artist then they must remember to be one.

Surely the 'aesthetic moments' are aroused by their contrived and conceited nature? All 'real' and 'authentic' art must be artificial, it must be seen as obviously planned that is how one enjoys the 'craft' of the artist. Trickery is involved, no doubt, a certain trompe l'oeil, which becomes evident in the piece The Two Teams Team, a short film where two actors take a break on set and discuss the merits of video art and the movies. Are these unguarded moments we are witnessing? The film begins and ends with the director saying 'cut' and the scene opening to reveal a working set. We are left questioning 'truth and reality', but any astute observer will understand the artificial hand of the artist, Manuel Saiz, subtly directing the film revealing the onion-like layers of meaning and interpretation, all very considered. And that's it: this 'made-up' element is essential to defining what art is.

I come away from this exhibition in a conceptual loop, brought on from the video installations (videos shown in a loop for the casual visitor) and the questions revolving around my head. But I have come away with some 'certainties' reinforced: that art is a fundamental need, that art has to be made and that an artist must declare themselves. I believe Manuel Saiz is an artist and that he shows art, so, is it any good? Its OK, and that's my private view, you may disagree.

Rachel Goodyear - They never run, only call

Rachel Goodyear - They never run, only call
24th January – 7th March 2009
Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 5pm
The International 3

This is the second exhibition Rachel Goodyear has given in Manchester in as many months, the last one at the Cornerhouse with The Intertwining Line, where she exhibited with other artists. I meant to blog on it but never got round to it (naughty me!) Anyway, I became interested in Goodyear's work there and decided to pop along to The International 3 to see her latest work.

Goodyear draws, in graphite and ink, small intimate pictures of people and animals, and the natural world usually entwined in ambiguous moments, that was the impression I had going to this exhibition, and my imagination wasn't disappointed. On leaving I did a word association game in my mind to try and distil some of what I had just seen. I came up with 'isolation', 'void', 'unprotected', 'suggestive', 'technical', 'mythology', 'miniature', and 'sightless', among other words, and these words, or the impression they give, sums up Goodyear's recent work for me.

I attended a talk that Goodyear gave at the Cornerhouse to accompany her art in The Intertwining Line so I already knew that she was interested in concepts like the void and isolation. But I think that any viewer of her work can come to this conclusion, I get it initially from the medium her work is presented in: white paper with minimal pencil or pen drawings. We get pictures of dogs, people, birds and wolfs, alone or in groups, branches reaching out, insects invading, and it becomes clear to me that they cannot be 'isolated', that there is always something going on, an interaction of some sort, no the feeling that is inspired is vacuum, or maybe ennui and a sense of aloneness, extenuating the space between, as no phenomenon is in isolation. I am making a philosophical point here, 'isolation' is a word misused in much the same way that 'nothingness' is misused, as, strictly being, there is no such thing as 'isolation' or 'nothingness', there always being something. It is impossible to represent 'isolation' one can only approximate something similar to it, say, a vacuum: that is: 'a region containing no matter, free space'. Scientists can measure vacuums because they can be compared with what is around them (a region), 'isolation' on its literal meaning ('without regards to context, similar matters'), cannot be measured and, therefore, cannot be known.

I digress, it is a bit of a bug-bear with me as I have a phenomenological theory that 'no phenomenon is in isolation' because no thing has ever come from nothing............(I'll leave that for another post); but what these thoughts bring to my impression of Goodyear's art do tally with something she has said about her work, the unprotected nature of what she does and what she represents: "Drawing manifests itself upon paper or the manipulation of found objects, all displayed unprotected, offering no evident elevation of status from conception to display." (from this website) We get this unprotected narrative, look at Girl who smiles at dogs, 2008, four dogs in a semi-circle (Alsations?) facing us snarling, teeth showing. There is a woman's back, shoulders and head facing us, we must assume her condition, fear? terror? or something malevolent, "a look of ghastly, twisted satisfaction on her face." as the exhibition leaflet says. That's the point, its unprotected, and to a degree, sightless: when the eyes are not facing us, they are either physically missing, altered in some way or misplaced as in Making new acquaintances, 2009. This art is very suggestive, presented on the walls with no accompanying titles (though they are all titled) they can be viewed with your own fantasies in mind. The titles, when you come to them, are straight-forward, descriptive titles that leave no room to dream.......Stags with dark eyes......Girl through a hoop..........Dog digging.......yet every single image leaves questions (unprotected?), why is she doing that? what does it mean? why are they interacting like that? There is no obvious narrative.

Or maybe the narrative is fantastical and mythological? On the face of it, of course we're in some sort of fantasy when we view these pictures, they're so unreal, everyday objects (people, animals, trees, ect) taken out of an everyday context, with interactions between man and animal, incongruent relations.......ah, now we're in the realm of myths. Traditional definitions tell me that a myth contains super-human beings, determined in an earlier age, a pre-literate age, that natural phenomenons are interpreted by such fantastical creatures. or that the myth is a theme or character-type that represents an idea. Goodyear's myths should be treated as similes, that is the drawings, like a figure of speech, resembling one thing in order to represent something other, of a different category. We get a sense of this in the graphite scene, Cave that Coughed, where out of the white void comes a cave entrance spitting out some twisted branch on which resides a wolf, snakes, some birds, one of which is falling off. The exhibition curator, Angela Kingston, in her explanatory notes, refers to Jung's interpretation of a dream he had about a cave: "Jung interpreted the cave in his dream as a passage to the unconscious." She should know that this 'interpretation' was actually Jung's interpretation/use of Plato's Cave Analogy, inverted: while Plato wished to show the 'real world' to the cave dwellers by leading them from the cave and into the light of the sun, explaining that to begin with the brightness of the sun (true knowledge, which comes from the Forms) would make it hard to see, Jung was interested in the psychological aspects of the dark, the unconscious. Truth is to be found in the recesses, of the mind as well as in nature. (Another bug-bear of mine is that, philosophically and phenomenologically speaking, there is no such thing as the 'unconscious', what is meant by this word is 'repressed memory', it being impossible to 'unconsciously recognise the unconscious', no we forget conscious moments.) Goodyear provides another interpretation bringing in the thought of co-existence and evolution: how do these animals live (and evolve) together in a cave, this wolf, snake and birds?

And this is what I like from art, the posing, the disputes over meaning, but there is also beauty involved, a technical element that pleases. These are delicately drawn illustrations that show technical virtuosity, with a naturalist's eye for detail. Close up viewing is required and this takes me back to the minimal presentation of these drawings, their focused nature: the surrounding void focusses the eye. I am also reminded of Goya's engravings, individual moments of madness frozen in time, the sense of abuse, the implied torment that some of Goodyear's characters go through, we see women in unnatural positions, with physical abnormalities, alien-like growths.........where do we go from here? To the art gallery, I say.

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision

Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision
Saturday 11 October 2008 - Sunday 11 January 2009
Manchester Art Gallery

I should like this stuff, it's medium is oil on canvas (for the most part), with a healthy splattering of colour and they even try to explore a narrative, yet Pre-Raphaelite paintings leave me cold. As a contemporary comparison, Impressionist paintings do not leave me cold and it is their lack of morality and their profound interest in representing nature truthfully (and aesthetically) that warms me every time I view them.

So, what is it about the Pre-Raphaelite's that I'm sceptical about? A quote from Holman Hunt himself goes some way to explaining my troubles with the Pre-Raphaelite movement:

"Painters should go out....like merchants of nature, and bring home precious merchandise in faithful pictures....with something like the spirit of Apostles, fearing nothing, going amongst robbers and in deserts with impunity as men without anything to lose."

Nothing in life is disinterested and having spiritual impulses should not necessaryly detract from a work of art, but this quote shouldn't hide the propaganda behind such images, and nor should such "merchants of nature" be considered as representing nature truthfully, they do not, they represent a cultural imposition: not the method, just the message.

For Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelites, nature is sick - you see this in the paintings on display in this exhibition, the representation of torment that can only be relieved by the Christian promise – the colours of life are garish, there is an imbalance somewhere. This 'sickness' we see in The Scapegoat with its other-worldly dusk and wobbly, symbolic goat. This symbolism and 'other-worldliness' reaches a disturbing conclusion with The Triumph of the Innocents, this image of children fleeing Herod's infanticide with Mary, Joseph and Jesus is disturbing, not because of the subject matter, but rather because of the picture itself: frankly the infants look demonic and this is probably an insight into the perverse relationship the British have with children. These demonic 'cherubs' are far removed from Botticelli's puttos, they don't seem to belong in the scene that is painted. While the rounded infants found in Botticelli's work can provoke they are also evanescent, captured with delicacy.

Tom Lubbock in the Independent expressed what I felt walking through this exhibition:

“He oppresses on three fronts. Symbolism. Moralism. Materiality. In a Hunt painting, every detail signifies something. It preaches a lesson. And most oppressively it has a solid, glistening physical presence.”

His work is too 'heavy', especially the palette with its bold, contrasting colours. Above I said that Pre-Raphaelite paintings leave me cold while Impressionist paintings don't. Yes Monet's palette contains bold, contrasting colours, but he used them in a much less incongruent way, leaving a more natural impression. With Hunt (and the other Pre-Raphaelite painters) there is, I think, an unintended dissonance between their depiction of nature and their 'moral message' super-imposed over the paintings – unintended to the modern viewer, at least. No doubt their way of representing nature 'truthfully' came at the insistent call of their Christian philosophy.

All in all, I won't deny that these paintings hold interest but they are not profound, they are too circumstantial for that, historical paintings with too much baggage that instigates their origin.