contemporary monkey

Something that Jeffrey Deitch said in the book, Collecting Contemporary (by Adam Lindemann) I thought was a very useful idea for understanding contemporary art.  Deitch is one of New York’s art dealers, with a background in finance as well as art.  Although he doesn’t come out and say it, his perspective is one where art is collectible for financial gain.  Still, what do you do with a Harvard degree, and Citibank Art Advisory on your CV?  I’m guessing the phrase “capital gain” comes up in his conversations with clients.

But everyone has their reasons for existing in the art world, and for a moment, let’s give Deitch credit for creative thinking.  He looks for an artist who “creates his or her own aesthetic world, as opposed to an artist who’s just making a nice object.  There are a lot of artists who make very nice objects, but you can’t really say that there is a whole vision of the world that you can grasp in their work.”

Creating worlds is a place where traditional story tellers excel, and artists should be held to the same level of expectation.  For example, in film, the Coen Brothers create their own worlds, and whatever the outcome to the protagonist, we’re always someplace we’ve never been.

Fargo: Joel and Ethan Coen

There was an online video once about a London artist by the name of Richard Galpin (Hales Gallery) where we followed along with him as he created his own invention using existing photographs.  Working with an enlarged C-Print of an existing city centre, he slowly peels away slices and sections of the original photograph, revealing his version of a futurist’s cityscape. The result shares very little with the original photo, but is useful as a “blank” screen for ground breaking results after a few hours.  It’s a revolutionary approach in that the world he’s given is not the world he’s taking.

Richard Galpin: Distructure 1

Can a photograph be art?  Images constructed inside the camera, or via Photoshop can be art-like, so it’s possible that photography can mimic art.  But if the image is everyday content, and it’s, well, big, does that make it more art-like?

Art World (April/May 2009) makes a “rare” interview with Andreas Gursky about his photographs (after reading the article, it’s understandable why he would be less inclined to speak to any art media).  Most of Gursky’s photographs are large, about 2 meters by 3 meters.  Most are either photographs of landscapes, or appear landscape-like due largely because of their size.  In one piece, a C-Print of a particle accelerator called “Kamiokande”, 2.2m x 3.7m, Gursky shoots a patterned wall of shiny solid globes. I suppose if I walked into someone’s house, and was faced with this image, I would call it impressive.  Mostly because of its size, not because of content.

In another of Gursky’s image, “Gas Cooker” (1980), it’s exactly that: his old gas cooker, white against a white wall.  He declares that one day it turned from a gas cooker to an image of a gas cooker, so he took the shot and reproduced it.  I’m pretty sure if I re-arranged the furniture in my sitting room one weekend, that would be more artistic than a picture of an unremarkable gas cooker.

On one occasion, Gursky claims to have had a “discussion” with his girlfriend outside, at night, when he finds himself focusing on the ground.  I guess that discussion was really only Gursky’s girlfriend having a monologue.  While looking down, he suddenly realized he was staring at a structure of a photograph.  The final result is a 1.5m x 2m picture of the ground, called “Untitled III”.  It’s the ground! How is that art??  You know those T-shirts that busty girls wear that say, “my eyes are up here (arrow pointing up)”?  Gursky’s girlfriend should get shoes with type that say, “my tits are up here”.  Oh that poor girlfriend…

This is an example of an “artist” navel gazing into their everyday surroundings in order to discover more about themselves.  A better description on this is called Art for Me, and doesn’t really need to be anywhere near public space, let alone be produced with public money.  To call photography of everyday images, regardless of their boldness, poignancy, social import, or even largesse, is not art.  It’s called photography, and any of us can, and do, do it.