contemporary monkey

olde worlde graffiti(e)

Some art galleries are better designed than others.  Indeed some are so well designed, they’re more appealing than the art presented inside.  Take the London’s Saatchi Gallery.  When it first opened, I wasn’t impressed much with the random pieces that Charles Saatchi called art, but the building’s flooring was visually and vastly impressive.  In fact, the Saatchi’s front desk at the time provided brochures featuring the flooring maker.  It was probably the most memorable thing to come out of the Saatchi Gallery since the Big Room of Oil.

The Wallace Collection in central London is another example.  The collection itself seldom gets any press.  “Hidden gem” is the tag usually attached to it, Odd Bag of Camp might be another phrase for it, but either way, it’s not always on one’s tour of contemporary art galleries and museums in London.  But as Damien Hirst has just moved in, art lovers are suddenly interested.  The Wallace Collection is a hodgepodge of bombastic Rococo style furniture, mantle pieces, French porcelain, and other collectibles, most from the 17th and 18th century.  If you’re interested in modern or contemporary art, you’d hate this stuff.  More than Jeff Koon’s basketballs, you’d hate this stuff

The gallery is filled with olde worlde trinkets that appeal mostly to 80 year old grandmothers and 8 year old granddaughters.  To the rest of us, it’s the Las Vegas of the art museum world.  It’s not my cup of tea, but to house so much of this eye candy in one place is impressive.  Whomever Wallace is, his or her collection is exhaustively consistent…and eye splitting.  I give it due credit, though, as it’s much more focused than the family collectors featured in Art + Auction magazine, who seem to hammer together a variety of styles and periods of history into one collection.  With the Wallace Collection, there is no doubt: the older and bolder, the better.

Dutch + Bacon + Hirst = Dull

Which is why the Wallace Collection is a peculiar place for Damien Hirst’s new attempt at creating art through his newfound friends, the paintbrush and the canvas.  Possibly he sees The Wallace as an inspiration to historical standards and now’s the time to shed the burden of putrefying animal carcasses.  Every one of his paintings, however, is a direct retrograde of somebody or something else: Francis Bacon’s chalk lines, 1990’s digital compositing, Dutch historical vanitas symbolism.  Running out of people to copy, Hirst even remakes himself using his own shark jaws, dots, and skulls from previous sculptures.  The whole scene felt more like an art school critique room than any sort of mature work by an established artist.  I guess that’s Damien, done.

Beyond the paintings, however, and much more importantly, is a Hirst contribution more profound, more substantial, and ultimately more significant to the art world.  In his effort to hang his canvases, Hirst has had to hang fresh wallpaper behind them.  The silvery, silky Victorian fabric fits the style of the interior perfectly, but also introduces a modern take on an old idea.  I found the wallpaper to be more visually absorbing than any of Hirst’s work.  It’s a damn shame most of the fabric is covered by someone’s mediocrity, but I suppose that’s the price of seeing new art.  We all have to do our bit by enduring the desperate in order to get at the quality.  I don’t care what Hirst does in the future, but whatever it is, he can show his next exhibition in my apartment if he needs a venue.  (Note to Hirst: the interior style of my apartment is mostly modern minimalism, and the wall colour could do with a little warming up.)

Staffordshire Gold Hoard of Plenty

The City of Birmingham is going through a collective treasure hunt for money at the moment, to acquire, or keep, recently found artifacts in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  On a Staffordshire farmer’s land, a seventh century, Anglo-Saxon gold hoard was found via the usual suspect: anorak wanderer armed with metal detector: a minimalist Indiana Jones.  The “gold hoard” is a collection of 1500 gold and silver pieces, and was originally displayed at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2009.  The hoard is now in the hands of those greedy treasure robbers, The British Museum, and the West Midlands is angling to get it back.

Popular British TV personality David Starkey has stoked the fire by throwing his celebrity-ness behind appeals for public and private money.  Starkey was quoted in the Birmingham Post web site saying, “…break it up or move it and its meaning is lost”.  This is the same argument that the Greeks use to retrieve the Elgin Marbles from those greedy bastards, The British Museum, to no affect.  Maybe the Greeks would like to contribute in spite.

I have a better idea, one that performs an educational role.  Let’s work with the facts: it’s a gold hoard.  That means long ago a greedy Anglo-Saxon chief (probably an ancestor to the greedy British Museum n’er do wells) stole, embezzled, or otherwise pilfered gold artifacts from another chief, or possibly his own tribe.  Let’s put the stealing in an environment that it deserves: jail.  The Maze Prison is in the process of being ripped down, but surely England must have their Alcatraz, or a version of Guantanamo Bay.  Why not convert part of an unused prison into a showroom for Britain’s found treasure hoards.  Children on school trips would get a two-for-one lesson: historical evidence of what is now their homeland, and a moral lesson for what happens to you when you steal.  Maybe add a chained-up, rotting old actor in one of the cells to add to the affect of misery.

What’s more, the security comes built-in.  Any art thief would be greatly intimidated to set foot anywhere near a jail.  For the optimistic crook who dares to make a dash for it, the one or two security agents stationed at the front door could easily bundle the burglars into a nearby cell.  Then call the nearest magistrate for a quick hearing, and game over.  Bandit caught, taxi fare saved, Bob’s your uncle.

“A Brief History of Curating” is a title recently published in 2008 containing interviews with about a dozen so-called legendary 20th century curators.  Strangely, all were born between 1919 and 1943, making them 65 to 89 years old at time of publishing.  If they’re still alive.  The interviewing happened between 1996 and 2008, but the fact is that nearly all could be considered curators for the mid-20th century.  So a brief history, it isn’t; unless you consider the 1990’s onward a vacant lot of contemporary art curatorship.

brief...and narrow

What struck me about reading the curators’ memoirs, was the anonymity of so many artists.  While a great deal of well-known modern artists were included in these long-ago shows, many more, long-forgotten names were included as well.  I hadn’t heard of 75% of the artists mentioned.  I think this reflects just how splintered the art world is.  In many other aspects of our lives, we can all name a top ten of some industry, or popular culture like music, film, literature, etc.  Visual artists are truly living the Warholian experience by being, at best, famous for a very short time.

Curating a show is by nature a relatively anonymous production anyway.  Only a certain type of person, who might have heard about the show, who lives near the exhibition, and is alive during a one to three month time frame, is going to see it.  Of that very small group, how many people are going to appreciate it or understand it? (Let’s face it, artists aren’t the world’s best communicators.)  What percentage will just say it was complete rubbish.  I realize this isn’t a very optimistic deduction process, and the candid results from this type of analysis would preclude anyone from doing anything ever again.  Still, it seems that curating could do with a little broadening of its distribution.

The best exhibitions are ones that affect the greatest number of people, regardless of the message and sophistication of the audience.  Whether it’s crass, antagonistic, violent, sexy, or even easy, affecting a large number of people will always result in a changed behaviour in the world.  Affecting very few people, won’t.  It’s simple maths, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

One of the museums of Disney

That’s why I think the greatest curator of the 20th century is Walt Disney.  Walt, and his team, not only created their own art, but devised the exhibitions as well: animated films, books, TV shows, Disney World.  Disney even did his own voice-overs.  He was also heavily involved in art education, bequeathing 25% of his fortune to The California Institute of the Arts, which places him amongst heavy spenders like national public galleries and museums.   Disney arguably did more for art in the 20th century than any curator did in fine art.  Even by today’s standards of investment and spending, the Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami, with his KaiKai Kiki LLC company, pale in comparison.