Michael Craig-Martin Godfather of Conceptual Pastiche
cypher
retrospective at I.M.M.A. Had my girlfriend had not been so keen to see
it I probably would not have gone. Craig-Martin dubbed the Godfather of
Brit-Art, taught such artists as Damien Hirst in Goldsmiths art
college, and it is easy to see what a seminal influence he has been on
artists of that generation. Craig-Martins conceptual sculptures of the
1970's formed and consolidated many of the conceptual innovations of
the 1970's which for better or worse have formed the lingua-franca of
today's art world. What surprised me about his retrospective was its
depth and quality, and its diversity of ideas. I hate expected to hate
it, but in fact I found quite a lot to admire, and I was glad my
girlfriend had dragged me along. But what depressed me about it, was
the realization, that success in the art world, gives one the ability
to inflate and make claims for ones work impossible to the failed or
unfashionable talent. Entering I.M.M.A.'s beautiful courtyard I
discovered its entire lower flower covered in one long continues print
of one of Craig-Martins colourful collections of household objects,
drawn in outline only and overlapping each other. All I could think
was: "How much did this cost to make, and install? And who paid for
it?"
Craig-Martins work plagiarizes many of the key ideas of 1960-70's
art. One of the key victims of this has been Patrick Caulfield, who's
colourful pop arty paintings of ordinary objects, Craig-Martin
converted into colourful overlapping line drawings of ordinary objects.
Many of these canvases were beautiful to look at and very well made.
But Craig-Martin has also hijacked Duchamp's use of ready-mades, Sol
LeWitts use of wall
nge the world, but it has and will cause a murmur within the walls of
contemporary art institutions - a game of minor aesthetic delight for
those who think art is nothing more than an intellectual trivial
pursuit.
The self deception and cultish insularity of the institutional art
world was summed up for me when I entered one of the rooms that held
Craig-Martin's infamous sculpture 'Oak Tree' which was a glass
half full of water on a glass shelve about eight feet high up on a
wall, with a plague with a conceptual interview in which Craig-Martin
asserted his right to describe it as an oak-tree. "Oh look there's
the glass of water that's an Oak tree!" I exclaimed to my
girlfriend. "No it is an oak tree!" The gallery intern exclaimed to
me. "Oh right." I murmured, not wishing to talk to her. "It is an
Oak Tree! Read the sign!" She haughtily proclaimed. I had no desire
to tell her I had seen the 'Oak Tree' in the Tate in London in
1996, or that I thought it was utter bullshit. Instead I dutifully read
the conceptual sign that accompanied the glass of water on a shelve and
moved on. But as I did my spine shivered with the same kind of disgust
that had filled me, when I had been forced to sit through Catholic mass
and go along with the religious delusion that wafer and wine were in
fact the body and blood of Christ. I frankly couldn't care less if
Craig-Martin chose to make the artistic point that whatever the artist
claimed was art - was art. I certainly didn't think it an original
statement, it was in fact just another pastiche this time of Duchamp
and Kosuth. But I did mind being told what to think by some snotty
nosed gallery intern. The art world can claim anything they want to be
art, but I and everyone else has the absolute right to deny it is art,
or if we think it to be art of a very smug, psydo-intellectual,
irrational and boring kind.
The truth about art is this - there is no eternal meaning to it, its
grand theories are largely obscure, elitist and subject to fashion, and
it has little or no power to effect any kind of change in society. Art
is nothing more than a mode of communication - part of a cultural
exchange. Sometimes it connects profoundly with its audience (as it has
done in the work of artists like Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Rothko
and Warhol) but most of the time it is nothing more than a form of wall
filler, decoration and distraction - a form of amusement. Great art
works form part of a visual debate about existence, and as in any
debate some ideas and expressions are more convincing than others. It
is the right and duty of every artist to pursue their art to the
fullest, but there is no entitlement on the part of their audience to
accept their work as profound, meaningful, beautiful or something that
can enrich their lives. I could see how Craig-Martin's work would be
highly instructive to young art students, conceptual artists and even
graphic designers, but for me it had no meaning to my work.
Before we left I.M.M.A we quickly went around 'Irish Art of the
1970's" which proved to be a very strong representation of Modern
Irish art, but also a store house of artistic ideas and styles now
redundant. Le Broquey was represented by some of his strongest works,
which reminded me that he did in fact have some small talent.
But my favorite work of the whole day was the photographic work
'Portrait of Alice Liddell, after Lewis Carroll' (2004) by Vic
Muniz in the 'Hearth' exhibition downstairs. This Photograph
consisted of the image of a girl made up of hundreds of brightly
coloured children's toys on a white background. From a distance it
looked like a beautiful Fauvist cum Pointillist painting, but up close
one delighted in seeing all the different kinds of children's toys
that were piled up to form the shape of the girl. The meaning of the
work was further deepened by being based on one of Lewis Carrol's
Victorian photographs of young girls (in this case Alice Liddell) which
with today's concern for children are controversial to say the least.
But the full implications of this choice of image, was beyond me at the
time - all I marveled at was the cleverness and beauty of the way the
image was made. Not only was it a beautiful image it was also smart
and knowing in the best Post-Modern sense - summing up as it wittily
did so many of they ideas of modernist representation and Post-Modern
re-representation..
www.thepanicartist.com (Over 18's Only) MY SITE CONTAINS MANY IMAGES OF
A SEXUAL NATURE THAT YOU MAY FIND OFFENSIVE.