Melencolia of The Self-Pitying Critic
cypher
Exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy on Ely Place in Dublin 2.
The RHA annual exhibition is a smaller and less star-studded
exhibition than its counterpart in London - The Royal Academy Summer
Exhibition. It also lacks the media attention the English standard of
the summer season possesses. The art press in London usually
ruthlessly pans the RA Summer Exhibition - but if they think that is
bad - they should see the RHA! What they both have in common of
course is the large preponderance of very minor artists - small
personalities, small talents and small intellects addressed to small
and parochial subjects. There is also just as many upper middle class,
old aged pensioners amongst its audience. Like the RA - the RHA annual
show hangs the hundreds of works - floor to ceiling. This is both its
joy and its nightmare. The democratic nature of the hang - can destroy
the prestige of a living master and heighten the efforts of the crass
amateur. The jumble sale quality of the show -is disorientating and
mind numbing.
I went to cruelly criticize - and praise only when struck by
excellence. But I found the whole experience so depressing that I was
plunged into introverted self-analysis. Of course the fiercest critics
of artists - are other artists - and I am no different. As I looked
around the exhibition - my heart felt utterly broken. Canvas after
canvas on wall after wall - leered, laughed and cackled at me! I saw
hundreds of drawings and paintings I would have been embarrassed to
have painted never mind signed and exhibited. I felt mocked and run
over by an army of mediocrity! My mind was battered by uncertainty and
unanswerable questions. How mad was I really? Just how bad was my
egotism, persecution manic, and Messiah complex? Why did I (in the
full midst of my abject failure as an artist, man and Dublin
intellectual) still think I was one of the top three artists in Irish
art history! LMAO! Why did I still believe this when I had been so
comprehensively rejected by virtually everyone in the Irish art
world? But then what kind of value did their opinion have when this
RHA stuff was the kind of shit they produced? Looking around the
sprawling spaces of the RHA I wondered if this was the best living
Irish artists could come up with? Was this the competition that was
holding me back?
I know art is not a science - it is not even a sport. There are no
objective criteria one can use to 'prove' that someone is a great
artist. - though there are quite a lot of ones that can tell you an
artist is not. There are a few guides to greatness; Degrees and
Masters, art prizes, influence on other artists, the number and
prominence of exhibitions, art magazine covers, sales, reproduction
rights, and society column inches (by which guide I am a virtual zero
and these RHA's are somebodies - at least in Ireland). But all these
will tell you is who is flavor of the month - it will not tell you if
an artist has any real long-term importance.
What that means I knew is that apart from a few dozen fashionable
artists - universally praised and admired (at least in the short term)
- there are over two million artists world wide whose work will always
be in a state of flux - neither admired nor condemned - merely filling
up living room walls or gallery floors. I know that no one sets out
to be mediocre - but that is what virtually everyone ends up being -
no matter how long they train - in no matter what art college, under
whatever art tutor, supported by no matter what major art gallery and
praised by no matter what art critic.
Snapping out of my self-pity I hunted for works that could inspire
something in me - anything. There were some real gems in the RHA show
- including some very strong charcoal drawings, some beautiful
landscapes and some telling portraits. Overall I thought it is a
stronger year than the previous one. I loved Joe Dunne's 'Portrait of
Cara.' In which he perfectly captured the shy awkwardness of a young
girl and although it is clearly a contemporary portrait - it still
possessed a classical restraint and subtlety utterly lacking in the
other more gaudy and incompetent portraits in the exhibition. I also
admired a small canvas by Hughie O'Donoughue - in which he had
collaged an old black and white photograph and page from a book -
which he had then over painted with a thin amberish stain and smear of
luscious amber paint. It had an inner glow to it that is magical. This
work confirmed O'Donoughue again in my mind as one of the very best
manipulators of oil paint in the UK. John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA was
represented by a far more ambitious and well-executed canvas than last
year. But again - as with last year it seemed drunkenly unfinished and
unpolished.
Stephen McKenna PRHA, Mick O'Dee RHA, Michael Cullen ARHA and Richard
Gormon RHA were all big disappointments - their work seems to get
worse year by year. Thomas Ryan PPRHA is as God awful as ever - I
seriously think he should have got an eye operation years ago - he
certainly should not be allowed to drive a car! He claims to be an
upholder of the realist tradition - but his realism is that of the
cataract suffer! I saw for the first time drawings by James Hanley RHA
- which proved conclusively what I had always thought about his work -
namely that it is schematic, rigid and devoid of any real human
feeling or sensitivity.
Nick Miller RHA, was another disappointment - since I am a big fan of
his work. But I found his 'Portrait of Kevin Volans' repulsive, slimy
and about twenty-five years out of fashion (it is all very Neo-
Expressionism alla 1982). Minor artists I have known personally in the
past like Oisin Roche, Mary Canty and Katy Simpson all looked
permanently tenth rate.
Yet again I was unimpressed with the crass photo-realism of Martin
Gale RHA. But when I looked again at one of his works in the catalogue
I was shocked at how good it looked in reproduction. Then I pulled out
a Robert Ballagh catalogue from the year before and found the same
thing true. Of course it all made perfect sense - art based on
photography - looks like shit as painting - but seen in reproduction
it seems far more technically accomplished.
In 1936, Walter Benjamin the great Marxist critic stated (in his
famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction')
- that reproduction would eliminate the 'aura' of the art object. In
actual fact he is completely wrong. The exact opposite has happened.
Because we live in a work filled with reproductions -art lovers crave
the reality of the art object as seen in person - and this is
strangely as true with conceptual art and modern sculpture as it is
with oil paintings. I firmly believe that a great art work has an
'aura' to it - something that grabs and holds your attention in a room
full of hundreds of other posturing canvases and sculptures. Counter-
wise I believe that all bad art has an anti-aura - something that
screams - this is fake and soulless! I saw only a handful of works in
the RHA that had an aura of greatness- but I saw hundreds with an anti-
aura.
Yet again the sculpture struck me as the utter pits of the
exhibition. The vast majority of the sculptural work was twee, kitsch,
trivial, childish, commercial brick-a-brack. But I also sensed
something more unsettling (an anti-aura) about the work of sculptors
like Eilis O'Connell ARHA and Alan Counihan and a few others I can't
remember. Their brand spanking new 'clever -clever' pastiches of
contemporary sculpture were utterly soulless and devoid of even a
sliver of originality. These were the 'high-art' sculptural
equivalents of fake IPods.
I have never sent any of my work in to the RHA and I doubt I ever
will. I hate their pompous titles and smug self-satisfaction. But I do
respect it as one of the last bastions of traditional skills in
drawing, painting and sculpture. But the problem is - even at their
very best these RHA members are nothing better than tenth rate. What
is worse is that many of them are teachers! How can artists who
struggle so clearly to master their mediums - hope to teach young
artists with even less knowledge? It is all a sad case of the blind
leading the blind!
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST AND WOULD LIKE TO READ MY OTHER BLOGS PLEASE
GO TO -
http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=cypherthepanicartist
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VIEW MY ART PLEASE GO TO - www.thepanicartist.com
Mani Deli
wrote:
>IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VIEW MY ART PLEASE GO TO - www.thepanicartist.com
Poor drawing and painting technique.
Mani Deli
>True. But his work shows promise. If this artist were to find a good
>teacher and work hard, I think he could produce some good things.
Probably!
His subject matter is really conventional. Yes, with the addition of
what you recomend he would probably be able to do work of more
complexity and be able to execute ideas he may have. However, what you
say holds true for most artists who show on the net, but first you
would need the teachers. The problem is that most teachers know even
less than he does.
Andrew Werby
last hundred years or so of art history, you don't really respect any modern
artists, and your teachers were apparently the worst of all. So why can't
you all get along?
Personally, I appreciate your periodic reviews; it's better than most of the
writing we get here in RAF (although proof-reading would help, for instance,
note the first "a" in "melancholia"). It's also criticism written by a
working artist, which tends to be more interesting than the work of
professional critics, since there's a place you're coming from that can be
seen in your work. I've never been to the Royal Hibernian Academy, but I did
think that London's Royal Academy show had something for everybody the last
time I went. I thought that was the point - inclusiveness for inclusiveness'
sake.
You should realize that the names which for you denote the dozen or so art
stars of Ireland mean little or nothing to most of us here - I read a lot
about art in general, but I've never heard of any of them. So when you're
doing this in future, feel free to include links to the artist's work on the
net - here's a google image search for Hughie O'Donoughue, for instance:
http://tinyurl.com/25pl94 - his non photo-based work, to me, was reminiscent
of the late Goya - perhaps too self-consciously so. Here's one for John
Bellany CBE, etc: http://tinyurl.com/2ykspm whose work to me seems to veer
unevenly between Matisse and Grandma Moses. Maybe it's just me, but I don't
see how a guy with all those initials after his name can justify posing as a
naif.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this piece was your attempt to figure
out your own place in the scheme of things, among the few artists whose work
you respect, or among the "tenth-rate" artists you actually know. Are you
more impressed by the degrees, the appended initials (we don't have those
here), the media attention than you let on? Why simultaneously bash one
artist for being "out of fashion" and another for being new and too clever?
Are these the poles you find yourself fluctuating between?
You do seem like an artist who has yet to settle down into a niche, which is
not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe that's because of the "failure" you
mention, since success seems to lock artists into working only in the mode
that brought it about. Unlike some here, I think your technical skills are
adequate to the artistic tasks you've imposed on yourself; the problem may
be that you're trying too hard, expecting to get attention for being
shocking, when the era for that is long past. If you were to enter one of
these big shows you scorn, what would you submit? One of the retro pieces
that echo commercial illustrations of the '50s and '60s? The porno-style
paintings (which would likely be rejected because of their subject matter,
allowing you to complain about censorship)? The Picassoesque doodles (done
just to show that anyone can paint like that?) The neo-Basquait pieces with
writing and scribbles? Or the quieter pieces where it seems like you let
yourself just paint, without particularly trying to prove anything to
anyone - which I liked best, actually, like Trees in a Park in Madrid :
http://tinyurl.com/349t8d . Or are you afraid that some impatient young
critic would dismiss them as old-fashioned?
Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com
"cypher" <cyp...@thepanicartist.com> wrote in message
news:1180310551....@u30g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
Mani Deli
<and...@computersculpture.com> wrote:
>It seems like you, Mani, and Biljo are all on the same page; you despise the
>last hundred years or so of art history, you don't really respect any modern
>artists,
There are as many great modern artists as any before. They just aren't
represented in the modern sections of museums at the moment.
>and your teachers were apparently the worst of all. So why can't
>you all get along?
>
Although we don't agree on art I suspect my general outlook and
opinions aren't very different from White's and probably your's.