Late Night Laugh: SC&A Institute Commencement Address
June 27, 2008
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
June 27, 2008
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
As many recent readers’ comments indicate, a lot of reasonable, smart people —including some artists — have nothing but contempt for contemporary art. A few even suspect contemporary artists — in particular, the famous ones whose moves from one mega-dealer to another are always in the art news, and whose exhibitions greedily gobble up whole museum interiors with gosh-and-golly “installations” — of pulling a fast one on the public.
Even people with broad taste in art, who like everything in modernism from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism, become enraged when they see so much contemporary art that to them looks deliberately ugly, or calculatedly offensive, or outrageously oversized or overproduced, or ridiculously expensive, or deliberately slack. The chorus of protest veritably shouts, “Why can’t contemporary artists just make beautiful art — like artists used to do?”
It’s important not to blame artists for changes in social and cultural values. Yes, they play a role in cultural changes, but they are not the single or even most important cause of those changes. Artists necessarily make art that mirrors their own times. (Otherwise, they’d be ignored — something artists emphatically do not like.) In modern times, some artists have been notoriously ahead of their times — but these artists are exceptions to the general rule, operative even in modernism, that artists who want to be significant in the history of art must, for starters, be recognized in their own times.
We can’t predict how people in the future will interpret art that’s made in any given era, or the new contexts in which it will be seen. The Greeks, for example, would have found our delectation over the armless Venus de Milo incomprehensible. People in the Renaissance would have thought it absurd to find beauty in Gothic ruins, and a museum-going bourgeois in Paris in the 1870s regarded Impressionism as hideously ugly.
If modern art has taught us one thing, it is to be appreciative of many different kinds of art. Picasso thought African sculpture was truly beautiful when most people thought it only exotic. The art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler thought Picasso’s African-influenced Cubist paintings beautiful when most people thought them ugly. Many current historians of modern art find Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn” paintings truly beautiful, where their predecessors found them merely crassly attention-getting. And so on.
Today’s most visible contemporary art reflects and compresses our society’s main beliefs into visual forms. Like it or not, the odds are that the art from today that’s thought to be great (or even just very good) a hundred years from now, is right now among the art that’s being shown in galleries. To invoke the old saw about fiction, “There are no Great American Novels lying in bureau drawers.” With the exception of “outsider artists” — the rare exception, since there are hardly any possibilities left for anyone to truly be “outside” society — visual artists aren’t like Emily Dickinson, quietly stowing their art away in a private place.
Whether we’re talking about Michelangelo with his celestial nudes, Monet with his “impression” of a sunrise, or the contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami with his bug-eyed, flower wallpaper, the first aim of an artist is to express some kind of meaning. For many artists, meaning comes through beauty. But not for all. Just about any expressionist artist — from Matthias Grünewald in the 16th century to Emile Nolde in the early 20th — aims first and foremost to express deep agony, and he (or, these days, she) uses deep distortion, rather than beauty, to achieve that aim. Seeing the paintings of Chaim Soutine or Francis Bacon or Alice Neel as “beautiful” is a retrospective, culturally acquired, taste.
Then there’s the vast and varied category of “conceptual art,” ranging from Marcel Duchamp and Dada from 90 years ago, through Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth a generation ago, to every third show in the Chelsea galleries today. It all goes for ironic meaning — a punch line, if you will — at the expense of not only beauty, but even any design considerations other than basic legibility.
But, one suspects, even if Duchamp had never been born and Dada had never occurred, our egalitarian age would still devalue beauty. We who live in this speedy, diverse, more or less democratic society are, down deep, fairly suspicious of beauty. Beauty is based on a hierarchy that labels some things undeniably “beautiful” and others irretrievably ugly. Most serious, inventive and “alive” contemporary artists don’t want merely to reiterate elements of an established hierarchy. Even if they are interested in “beauty,” they want to test its boundaries, to make it new, to make it a beauty that speaks to their times. This is the task for artists of our times. Blaming contemporary artists for the situation caused by the democratic age in which we live is, in the end, a little silly.
When the next generation of artists looks back at the art being made today, it will probably dismiss most of it not as ugly, or too ironic, but as merely old-fashioned, i.e. not “beautiful” in a meaningful way to them or, with our current “conceptual” art, not ironic enough. Sometime in the future, however, some overlooked aspect of some of today’s art will inevitably stimulate new and unexpected beauties. “Beautiful,” that is, to people energetic enough to get out there and look at contemporary art, open-minded enough really to wrestle with it, and savvy enough to try to sort things out for themselves.
This, folks, is the way the art ball bounces.
Rules and regulations, EU style
A market trader has been banned from selling a batch of kiwi fruits because they are 1mm smaller than EU rules allow.
Inspectors told 53-year- old Tim Down he is forbidden even to give away the fruits, which are perfectly healthy.
The father of three will now have to bin the 5,000 kiwis, costing him £1,000 in lost sales.
Speaking yesterday from the stall in Bristol he has owned for 20 years, Mr Down said: ‘It’s total nonsense. I work hard enough to make a living without all these bureaucrats telling us what we can and can’t sell.
‘They’re saying I’m a criminal for selling this fruit, but the real crime is that all this fruit will go to waste - all because it’s 1mm too small.
‘It’s a terrible waste, particularly when we’re all feeling the pinch from rising food prices and I’ve got to throw away this perfectly good fruit.’
There are thousands of children starving in Africa…
A Canadian stand-up comedian will face a human rights tribunal hearing after a woman complained she and her friends faced a “tirade of homophobic and sexist comments” while attending one of his shows.
“They were drunk, they were being jerks and I was very rude and visceral to them because, like I said, if you have a heckler what you want to do is put them in their place by offending them, so I tried to hit them where it hurts and the only thing I had to key on was the fact that they were lesbians.
“I don’t care if they’re lesbians, heterosexuals, homosexuals or giraffes.”
Mr. Earle said the complaint is an attack on comedians’ right to perform. “I would never have expected it would get escalated to a philosophical battle.”
George Carlin would have died a poor man if had been a Canadian.
No smoking allowed- unless you are lighting up a joint or some hash
Starting next week, you’ll still be able to legally smoke a joint in the famously relaxed coffee shops of Amsterdam — but for a cigarette, you’ll have to step outside.
A tobacco ban that goes into effect Tuesday in the Netherlands has both tourists and shop owners, like, totally confused, man.
“It’s crazy,” says Jon Foster, 36, an American who owns the popular Grey Area coffee shop in the gentrified Jordaan area of central Amsterdam. “It seems totally illogical to have a business that specializes in smoking and you ban tobacco.”
The new law prohibits smoking in bars, cafes, restaurants and clubs to protect people from secondhand tobacco smoke. It is similar to bans that have swept across Europe since Ireland made pubs smoke-free in 2004, as well as restrictions across the USA.
The contradiction here is that the ban extends to coffee shops in the Netherlands that are renowned since 1976 for letting people buy and smoke marijuana or hashish without being arrested.
IBM is working with candy maker Mars Inc. and the U.S. government to study the genetic code of cocoa trees to safeguard the world’s chocolate supply.
Closely held Mars, the maker of M&M candies and Snickers bars, and the U.S. Agriculture Department will sequence the entire cocoa genome, deciphering the plant’s biological map. IBM will analyze the results using Blue Gene, the world’s second- fastest supercomputer, the company said today in a statement.
Political unrest and plant diseases in Africa, home to two- thirds of cocoa production, have driven up prices more than 50 percent in the past year. Cocoa trees in Africa and Asia have become increasingly stunted from fungus, insects and drought, triggering supply shortfalls.
In a bid to appease the ‘militants,’ look for keffiya’d and hijab’d M&M’s in a store near you.
Who Gets Palestinian Aid? The EU Isn’t Telling
June 27, 2008
Relations between the EU and Israel received an upgrade last week. In Luxembourg, a decision was taken by the EU’s 27-member states to “elevate our [EU] relations to a new level of more intense, more fruitful, more influential cooperation,” according to Slovenian foreign minister Dimitrij Rupe whose country holds the EU presidency.
Despite these positive developments, there is an aspect of this relationship that if not properly dealt with, could strain EU-Israeli ties. And the reasons for this should be of serious concern for Bulgarians worried about the transparency and accountability of EU institutions.
The issue is over EU-funding of Non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Every year, the EU provides tens of millions of Euros to various NGOs ostensibly to promote “peace”, “democracy”, and “reconciliation”. However, according to NGO Monitor, many of these NGOs use EU funds to promote Palestinian rejectionism, deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and for other campaigns of deligitimisation.
Most notable is the campaign of “Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions”, which receives support from Christian Aid, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) and the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ)- all EU-funded NGOs. In this regard, the EU actually funds groups, which undermine their official policies.
But what upsets Israelis the most is the opaque nature of the funding process. Despite a Ђ23 million budget for 2007, the Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) does not identify the names of its Palestinian partner NGOs. Similarly AIDCO, which manages the “Partnership for Peace” programme, does not require its grant-recipients to identify the names of NGOs it provides EU monies to. Evaluations of EU-funded projects are also kept secret.
This is both a normative problem for the EU, which has emphasised the importance of transparency in government, and a practical issue that impedes oversight and an informed critical examination of performance indicators. The European Ombudsman seems to agree, and issued a strongly worded statement in June criticising the Commission for withholding documents from public scrutiny.
Ensuring that this issue does not become a thorn in the flowering EU-Israel relationship is critical. Bulgarian citizens and parliamentarians, regardless of their view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, have an important role to play. Demanding information from the European Commission on how public funds are spent, and asking whether they actually contribute to peace will demonstrate to the Israeli public that Europe is serious about using civil society to further strengthen this important strategic relationship.
So You Think You’re Special?
June 27, 2008
From The Social Affairs Unit:
No, we can’t all be special- And to think we can is the road to personal unhappiness and social breakdown.
Few would disagree that the need that most of us have to be appreciated by others – by our family, our friends and peers – is natural and healthy. The desire to be well-thought of can act as both a spur to individual achievement as well as a glue for keeping society together. Striving to be top in the field, to hone a particular talent, or to simply make money if that’s your chosen path, can be inspiring and attractive.
But the need to be special, to be taken uncritically at one’s own self-evaluation, or to draw attention to oneself at every opportunity, is something else entirely. Claiming uniqueness regardless of talent or deed, by making oneself the most seen, by shouting the loudest, or simply by way of brute force, might give the individual satisfaction – although this alone is highly questionable – but the effect on society’s morale can be both destructive and divisive. It’s this phenomenon which is currently disfiguring the British social landscape, and which I try to explore in Look at Me: Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain.
One need look no further than the language. It’s fair to say that the traditional British characteristic of self-effacement is now obselete. Be understated now about your work (“Oh, it keeps the wolf from the door”), or what you have done with your life (“this and that”), and you will be taken at your word. For many modern Britons, raised to cherish self-esteem above all else, such modesty is simply not understood or is tantamount to self-negation, the greatest crime of all. Hyperbole rules the day, regardless of the banality of the circumstances: I’m devastated, you’re totally incredible, he’s completely bizarre.
Putting yourself at the centre of the universe, childlike as it is, is not in modern Britain a habit restricted to would-be stars, surly youths and hyped-up urban professionals. Educated middle class types do it in more rarefied ways, although the effect is the same in the end. Despite the ever-increasing use in the media of the word “community”, and indeed what would appear to be a nostalgia for the simplicities of the past, there is in fact a repudiation amongst some sections of the population of any form of collective identity, whether expressed in nationhood, locality or personal roots. Such concepts are seen as constricting by these single, soaring selves.
Fascinated by other cultures, from which they carefully cherry-pick, and fans on principle of anything which transgresses the “norm”, they are self-designated Citizens of the World, flattering themselves with their love for “the other”. Totally self-formed (at least in their own eyes), they can shine forth, unsullied by any form of limiting group membership. Even when they do something as collective as a political protest – Not in My Name! – it is still resolutely egotistical.
Not that a group in itself is a bar to being special – so long as it’s the right one of course. If you can claim victimhood of one or other variety – and according to one recent report, that’s upward of 70% of us – you too can count yourself special. If that fails, then you can always exploit your emotional life for the benefit of the cameras – or perhaps, hook yourself onto somebody else’s grief.
But it is in the cult of celebrity – which could arguably be better renamed the cult of visibility – that we can see the most glaring manifestation of what we might call the flight from ordinariness in modern British culture. Witnessing the elevation of the nonentity from mostly well-deserved obscurity to a position in which he or she receives blanket coverage from tabloid and broadsheet alike – as happens most obviously in so-called reality television – is an utterly demoralising and draining experience. Our attention is forced onto people and events which would otherwise barely occupy our thoughts, and in the process our own everyday priorities, concerns and efforts are demeaned and diminished. Jade Goody’s effect on us has not, ultimately, been an elevating one.
The current obsession with celebrity is at odds with the broader landscape of British culture, which has traditionally prided itself on being less susceptible to such things. It exists now purely as an end in itself, the flip-side of our own obsession with ourselves. Celebrity is seen by thousands as an utterly attainable state, a tradable commodity. The more level-headed might be amused by the passing circus. Even those with a modicum of self-awareness would be able to put a distance between it and themselves. But for the less well-equipped, brought up to believe that all must have prizes, there really is no hope. And if, like the yob, they feel they’ve been told they are infinitely capable and then cheated of their place in the game, they might even get violent.
Should any of this matter? If you worry about the gradual disintegration of the public arena, then yes, it matters. If you are one of those people who finds yourself slowly but surely abandoning visits to restaurants, cinemas and theatres, exhausted by the loud exhibitionism and selfishness which passes for “vibrancy”, then it matters. If you despair at the debasement of both our culture and its belief in the importance and capacity of the individual, it matters. It you believe that an attachment to something bigger than just our own selves is vital not only for social cohesion but inner balance, then it matters hugely.
A couple of years ago, the Prince of Wales, in his typically plaintive fashion, bemoaned the fashion for out-of-control self-belief. He complained in a leaked memo:
What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their capabilities?Predictably and wilfully misrepresented, the Prince was torn limb from limb by a media which saw only aristocratic de haut en bas. But you didn’t have to be remotely privileged to see he’d put his finger on something. His remarks sparked a few days of discussion about the failings of the education system. Vitally important though that is, it’s not the whole story. If the Prince feels like venturing into further enquiry, perhaps Look at Me: Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain will give him more food for thought.
And Now, Sniffer Dogs Are Offensive
June 27, 2008
Muslim ANGER at sniffer dogs at station
Muslims travelling on trains from Brighton have objected to sniffer dogs being used to search them for drugs and bombs.
The trial by the British Transport Police (BTP) on all rail passengers travelling through the station prompted complaints from some Muslims who said their religion did not allow direct contact with dogs.
The findings, outlined in a Government report, showed that in another trial on the Heathrow Express platform at London’s Paddington station, body scanners were considered unacceptable on religious grounds by female Muslims.
The report on five rail security trials conducted in 2006 and the public’s response to them also revealed that some Asians and black people felt they could be selected for tests because of their ethnicity or because screening staff saw them as potential terrorists.
But the BTP said that despite being conscious of other people’s beliefs, no-one would be absolved of the security checks on religious grounds.
A BTP spokesman said: “We are obviously aware of, and sensitive to, cultural sensitivities.
“BTP officers do have the power to stop and search anyone under section 44 of the Terrorism Act.
“This also covers the use of dog handlers and dogs, which are used to indicate any substance they have been trained to detect.
“As a force we obviously look at feedback about how people from all faiths and backgrounds view the use of dogs and how we can incorporate that into how the dogs and their handlers interact with people.”
