contemporary monkey

Antony Gormley: Breathing Room III

When men imagine themselves driving cars; we usually picture ourselves in an environment that suits the particular model. A Bugatti Veyron on Germany’s Nurburgring with the landscape visibly blurred as we roar through the air. Inside a Mitsubishi Evo, we’re tearing up a dirt track off-road, sliding around sharp bends in the trails of Northern Europe. Tucked away in a polished Bentley, we maneuver quietly through a quaint village nestled in the middle of England, with a name like, Chipping Bloodlet or something equally outdated, secluded away from the ugly world of commerce.

The English: a fashion unto themselves

Ladies, when you shop for fashion, you’re likely picturing yourself wearing a black slinky dress at the next opening gala, or a comfy but fine leather jacket for a first date, or perhaps a massively large, conspicuous looking hat at a Derby Day lunch. Again, such a hat requires a suitable place; a town with a fitting name like Paisley-upon-Biscuit. Oh dear me, such is the life of the leisure class.

Back in the land of the cosmopolitan, when the artist Antony Gormley thinks of people, because he often does think of people, he prefers to put the human being in its/our proper environment. Given a comparative act of measurement, how do the average joe and jane bloggs stack up. Where do they belong, and is there really a need for towns like Chipping-before-Wenlock?

This man lives in a Chipping-upon-village

You might have encountered a Gormley sculpture, as he’s famous for installing human-type shapes in, mostly, the British landscape. Perched on top of buildings, rooted in rocky beaches, fondly overlooking English cities, even submerged in flooded cathedral crypts. Gormley was also responsible for One and Other, the idea of placing the public on the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square to give them their hopeful 15 minutes (x 4) of fame. If Gormley isn’t obsessed with modern man’s position in space, I don’t know who would be.

In London, at White Cube Mason’s Yard, Gormley reverses the perspective to work on the perimeters that instead surround the human in its habitat. He lets us maneuver about the place, providing an occasion for us to measure not only ourselves, but other visitors and how we compare with each other. Sealed in the basement of the White Cube, following endless stairs downward, filled with the sudden dread of thinking do I really want to walk back up, is an intersecting group of 15 white frames made of glowing, wooden scaffolding, taking over the whole of the room. Think of a Damien Hirst installation without the shark, formaldehyde, or the glass. And definitely without the the stupid title (”The Feeling of Looking Silly in the Mind of Someone Who Claims to be an Artist”). Also, very much larger than Hirst’s productions.

Hirst-Super-Mare

When I say glowing, I mean each 1×1 inch length of wood, joined to make multiple boxes, is painted with some sort of phosphorescence that glows for about 15 minutes, before needing a recharge. The recharge, as it happens, is a blinding bolt of white light from heat lamps concealed in the ceiling, flipped on for about 30 seconds. This of course suggests that viewers are all walking around in the dark when the overhead lamps aren’t on, bumping into each other if it weren’t for the brightly lit wooden posts giving off residual energy. Ugh, that light was on far too long. I probably looked horrible, and I know some of my fellow gallery-goers, who were until recently cloaked ghosts, could use a fashion do-over.

Now that the light’s are dimmed again, time to get on with the business of measuring ourselves. The installation includes my favourite activity in art: participation. Because it’s (nearly always) dark (ish), you have free clearance to touch things. Well, not people of course. You can fondle the structure as long as you don’t leave the sculpture wobbling, because the remonstrating Irish girl at the front will otherwise hurl her way toward you, possibly unsheathing a weapon, to “caution” you. Not that this happened to me, of course. I’m much more surreptitious. Still, visitors are encouraged to walk amongst the wood, as it were, and do their best not to damage anything on the way through the “pine forest”. Also, because this is the British Republic of Health and Safety and Please Pray that England win the World Cup, the sign at the front door says you’re on your own if you clobber yourself on the head. Clobbering oneself, however, would be a good use of the structure for personal measurement: “I guess I was too tall for that wooden timber, must be about 6 feet tall that beam. By the way darling, do you have a tourniquet?”

“Breathing Room III” (or 3, or Three, however you want to confuse your guests) as it’s entitled, is not only a probe for how we as humans fit in with the world - including other people in it - but it’s a great place where you literally cannot read anything; including any redundant titles or copy for the installation. My first instincts on entering galleries is to avoid what some over-ambitious young gallery employee might have written about the importance of the installation. It’s much easier, and more interesting, to get straight on with the art - minus the enthusiastic wordsmithing. Gormley’s site is one that must be experienced directly as an image and structure to be a part of. And if it’s in a dark room with other curious individuals, even better. The only things missing are beer and wine.

The upstairs neighbors at White Cube

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.)

In order to further assist artists with their efforts in gaining a following and thus increasing their importance to the brotherhood of man, I thought to create a mathematical model that explicitly describes a winning formula.  “Simian’s Theorem of Grasp” is a useful device for eliminating those individuals, who, in the end, don’t matter enough to the lonely artist, while optimizing the number of people in the world who do.  We can all do with a little closet cleaning, and to no-one is this activity more important than to the starving artist.

Simian’s Theorem of Grasp states that

x = y - (a + b + c + d);

where the constants and variables are explained to the forlorn artist as follows:

a = you, and, with the possible exception of Grayson Perry, is always constant at 1.  Realistically, if you hope to have a chance with your art, your influence should attempt to reach beyond this lonely number.

b = your friends (variable in number, decreasing with time, and usually insignificant in this filthy business of art.). This group will never tell you that your art is rubbish, and will therefore most likely lie to you when asked by you, “This art, do you get it?”  Your friends are one thing, your friends in art are quite another.  In fact, your true friends will probably thank you for literally leaving them out of the equation.

c = art patrons.  These individuals are usually quite wealthy in cash, but poor in judgement in matters of art.  People in this group can include British bankers, Russian oligarchs, American hedge fund managers, Mexican drug runners, and Charles Saatchi.  When we speak of those with “more money than sense”, it’s this group of whom we speak.

d = sycophantic art culture hangers-on (similar to “b” above, but even less significant in the art scheme of things).  Those in this group act differently than variable “b” in that the number may actually increase with time if you’re represented by powerful, yet delusional, agents.  Please remember however that knowing more of the wrong people doesn’t help you with your goal of making a real difference in the world.

y = everybody on planet earth; including those hard to count tribes in Indonesian jungles.

x = this is perhaps the most important of the variables: this the magical number of willing individuals who seek to derive meaning, or feel emotion, or exhibit love toward your art.  This group can include those that, unprompted, unpaid, and unrehearsed, say they like your work.  The higher this number, the more influential you will be to mankind.  This variable is the antithesis of a,b,c and d combined.  Think of x as the Jedi knights, while a,b,c and d are, well, you know who…

Success in art is really this simple.  It’s been proven to be true by those that have high “x” factors, such as Anish Kapoor, and perversely proven true by those, such as Damien Hirst,  with high “c” and “d” factors.  Please be advised that, because of its greater potential, “x” can be an extremely large number.  The wise artist will use this to his or her advantage, and will soon find that the c’s and d’s of the formula soon become useless and trivial.