contemporary monkey

“…It provides a means for understanding the contemporary world, and, potentially, for making it a better place.”  You’d be mistaken if you thought this ambitious phrase was lifted from an exhibition programme at a contemporary art gallery, or an expensive brochure at a museum of modern art.

It would be a good guess though.  People in the art world certainly throw that kind of thing around like it’s part of the badge, and it sounds like a focused aim of contemporary art.  Those That Know Best proclaim that contemporary art confronts us with purpose, and questions our angles and viewpoints in daily life.  Contemporary art tackles the tough problems with a smack on the head and makes us think about our choices.  It’s supposed to change our perception, make us think differently, get us to move in a new direction.  The position of contemporary art in our lives, however, is being usurped by a a new leader.  Ladies and Gentlemen of The Arts and Letters, Distinctive Guests, and Biennial Buddies, you’ve just been lapped.

The quote above was taken from the About Us section of The Design Museum’s web site.  Contemporary Art, over the last century, has had its chance to make friends and influence enemies.  Instead of addressing the everyday man, however, it chose to address the marginal few - in many cases, the very few - those that have bags of money, or the simple gullibility to create a market in a vacuum.  Contemporary Art has created it’s own No Girls Allowed Club.

Most of us have a bigger commitment to design than we do contemporary art.  Not that we haven’t tried the latter.  But design is more affordable, available, and intelligible.  It solves problems, makes us aware of ourselves, forces us to act, makes our heart beat faster.  It becomes part of our personal statement to our fellow Earthlings and probably beyond.  Design is our individual and collective branding.  It builds network-like organisation across imaginary lines of religion, geography, politics, and arguably solves a lot of the world’s problems right there.  Two parliamentarians, or members of Congress, could easily throw verbal blows across the room, but they could just as easily be seen later in the day exchanging applications on their iPhone, or talking about the design of the city’s new symphony hall.

Contemporary art, on the other hand, struggles to get noticed.  I often ask this question of people I know or just meet: Do you understand contemporary art?  Close to everyone says no, but they certainly mean to comprehend it one day.  How many countries, religions, industries have that apologetical clause at the end of of a statement, they mean to.  It’s like flossing your teeth, or joining a gym.  We know it’s the right thing to do, and we’ve been meaning to for the longest time, but…

Contemporary Art goes out of its way to make enemies, to confound, confuse, berate, annoy, mis-fire, even put to sleep.  Very few of us are buying what they’re selling.  However, most of us can talk about Ferraris, iPods, Prada, great CD covers, well thought out gardens, art deco skyscrapers, the latest hair style, cool night clubs and modern restaurants with contemporary takes on French cuisine.  We can go on about skateboard graphics, impressive graffiti, luxurious handbags, sleek running shoes, even Italian inspired salt and pepper shakers.  And  we don’t have to own or experience any of them.  We’d be happy as Larry aspiring to a level of just talking about it over pints, or browsing over shelves.

Jennifer Northrop is the Director of Communications and Marketing at America’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.  Cooper-Hewitt is the American equivalent to the British Design Museum, only more thorough in history (they seem to like collecting there).  She had this to say about the 2009 National Design Awards, and the effects of design in our lives.

“Design is intriguing to the public,” says Jennifer Northrop, director of communications and marketing at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, “because design isn’t art.”

Ouch!

Needing to know more about Cy Twombly - who he was and his creative influences - I discovered an “incident” that occurred in France to one of his paintings.  A fan was so taken with Twombly’s triptych “Phaedrus” that she kissed one of the panels (the mark is more like a grope in the back of the bus).  Eventually a French court found her guilty of “voluntary degradation of a work of art”, and given a fine along with community service.  Moving beyond destruction versus adoration, let’s assume her intent was honorable.  What would you do if someone fell in love with a product of your imagination, inspiration and love, and changed the results of your labour to reflect their grateful, albeit selfish, approval?  Does the art achieve a bigger story because of the affair?

Cy Twombly's "Phaedrus": after, and before

The woman, Rindy Sam, was eventually fined €1000 to the painting’s owner, €500 to the gallery showing it, and only one euro to the artist.  It’s not a lot of money considering the significance of the act and one could imagine the €1501 penalty being used to clean the thing back to its original state.  This made me think about who owns the art, and where value lies.

Most art is produced through inspiration, but you and I wouldn’t know what that inspiration was unless the artist told us.  Not often having this direct access, the substitute is that we love the painting for reasons other than the original intention.  This alternative generates a story of its own, building in two meanings to one piece of work.  Can art be shared peacefully like that?  Or does it produce a Palestinian/Israeli type conflict of property ownership?

That the artist received only a euro in this episode seems to imply penalty as only a gesture of contrition.  A small “sorry about that” from an overzealous (or absurd) fan.  That the painting’s owner received the largest percentage of the fine demonstrates an individual’s compensatory need for money, and not a longing for the original idea.  This would suggest the owner has changed the meaning of the original intent.  Shouldn’t the owner then be fined for their action of purchase?  To me, this suggests that a work of art occurs at the time an artist is in full battle with the piece.  Anything after that is mere fetish; for reasons monetary, amorous, or psychological.  It’s all the same to me - changing the original intent.

The most important, and, for that reason, the greatest relationship with a work of art, is one between artist and creation.  In order for others to gain even a small fraction of that initial moment, would be to know the artist’s story at first incident.  Supplemental to that event, the outcome is really appropriation.

It’s no wonder art galleries are going out of business during the credit crunch.  I just hope artists are rigorous in their representation awareness to know that, possibly the reason they might be starving artists is because the profligate galleries are busy sleeping or drilling holes in the wall.

This past week, on my most recent effort to find new art in London galleries, I took a chance at visiting a gallery that claimed to be open.  It was sort of a return to a busted moment I had with the same gallery last Autumn.  At the time, I had made a visit to Lazarides Gallery, on Greek Street, only to find it temporarily closed.  It was difficult to tell it was closed because the address it was supposed to be at, didn’t even have a sign out front that said Lazarides Gallery, let alone one that might say, oh, something like, “Out to lunch, back in a few days”.

At the time I brushed it off because I had other galleries to visit.  On this last trip however, I decided to give the Lazarides Gallery another go.  I discovered through their web site that the Greek Street location had re-opened as their print shop, and a newer gallery for original art was only a five minute walk away, on the other side of Oxford Street at Rathbone Place.  Last Friday, at about noon, I found the Rathbone shop easily enough, as the marketing department somehow worked out a way to make a sign that says, “Lazarides Gallery”.  According to their web site, the gallery opens at 11am most days, and certainly Fridays.  I tried the door without any luck, and there wasn’t the usual intercom buzzer that galleries sometimes use to keep out people like me…people who might actually buy something from them.  The only objects I could see through the steel fence in front of the window, was a man with his head wedged into the wall.  I remembered an artist who had made sculpture like this, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was the gallery owner who had been viciously beaten into the building walls for not paying rent on time.

The Lazarides Gallery on Rathbone Place is pretty much of a non-entity in my book because they don’t know how to run a business.  As I was in the neighborhood, however, I plowed my way toward the old Greek Street location across a busy Oxford Street, where conceivably people who buy art might, in fact, be strolling by Lazarides’ Rathbone Place Gallery.  Good news for me as the Greek Street print shop was open and two fresh-faced, young men welcomed me.  One had a drill in his hand, and after welcoming me, apologized for the soon to be grinding wood demolition noise.  Despite all this Lazarides-inspired destruction and mayhem, I had a peek at some of their prints.  Between intermittent bit-plunging into the wall, the two guys were helpful and nice.  As for the art, not including the Banksy pieces, most of the prints seemed well-priced for those that are interested in owning art, but don’t have the fortune of deciding whether to buy an original art piece, or a car.  I particularly liked some of Conor Harrington’s prints, where he combines both oil and spray to composite fine art with graffiti.  Anyone who sprays paint over fine art has great potential to be one of my art heroes.

Artist: Conor Harrington

That’s what you get mostly in the Lazarides Print Shop: graffiti, which I like a lot.   It’s about the only art that the average person walking down the street can enjoy, without having to visit a major art institution, or heaven forbid, stumbling upon a gallery that’s open when it says it’s open.