Marcus Westbury’s excellent series Not Quite Art returns to ABC1 tonight – @ 10pm, with a replay on ABC2 on Sunday @ 7pm and streamable on iview. Stilgherrian has more.
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I found the program shallow and actually disingenuous. The thing is he rarely gets to talking about, let alone actually critiquing the art itself. Tonight he kept trotting out the tired old argument that there is an “old” art which is out of touch and a “new” art that is in sync with what people are doing. Its the standard argument that people use to make what they are on about seem cool – make out that there is an establishment that is out of touch, then pretend that you are in touch with something new and innovative (but don’t mention what this innovation actually is except to say that its popular) and if you don’t get it then you are obviously passé. It’s just turf warfare.
Why can’t we have a discussion that links artistic trajectories over time and is inclusive rather than this trite and simple minded pop myth of art as revolution.
I’m not sure that applies to the discussion with Alison Croggon – that was clearly focused on involving more people in discussions about theatre and poetry through blogs.
I disagree that there’s no room for a show that focuses on cultural policy and different forms of culture rather than critical evaluation. I haven’t watched it for ages but the trad art coverage on Sunday arvos, last time I looked, was Virginia Trioli looking very satisfied with herself while doing very soft interviews with artists, writers, etc.
But, I don’t think it was up to the same standard as last year’s. The stuff last year about different approaches to cultural policy was really well done. Maybe it’s because games and industrial music or whatevs that stuff was don’t push my buttons, but I don’t think that the points being made were made strongly enough or that strong.
Also, the two subjects in the first bit – the music dude and Yahtzee – were pretty awful interviewees. Maybe it’s the geek/nerd thing but they were pretty weak on the communication skills. And to be frank, the first guy came across as a shallow self-satisfied wanker. Not that there aren’t shallow self-satisfied wankers in other areas of culture, I hasten to add. But over all I didn’t feel that it worked all that well as tv.
Agreed, Peterc (although perhaps not about the turf warfare, since that suggests a degree of critical thought I think is lacking). In short, it was sh*t. It would have been mildly interesting circa 2005, but today? No. He made this particularly shallow point about how Australian intellectuals used to go to the UK to find a similarly intellectual audience, so it was really really amazing and interesting that video-game critic Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw had come to Australia from the UK. You could see Mr Croshaw was looking upon Mr Westbury with mild bemusement.
If you’re going to bother doing this old vs new schtick, at least pick a good example and treat it with respect. Don’t just loosely tie a whole bunch of disparate things together with ‘oh my god, Australian artists have international audiences now because of computers and things, blah blah blah.’
BBB
I agree about Trioli (and her politics stuff is almost as bad)- we need people on Sunday arts that actually know something about the topic. I didn’t say that a program on the arts had to be critique based to justify its existance. But to justify the claims that Westbury was making he needs to show us what the art is and why its significant.
I disagree about the need for critiquing if the point of the show is about new avenues for art. If one is trying to make a point that the gatekeepers of theatrical institutions, publishing etc. aren’t as essential as they once were (due to technology that allows audiences and artists to find each other more easily), placing oneself in the role of gatekeeper seems a tad disingenuous.
this trite and simple minded pop myth of art as revolution.
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I believe the mythology of Art and Revolution was an artifact of the early 20th century avant-garde. I’d argue that this view of Art as a cultural phenomena akin to Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard pretty much petered out by the start of World War II.
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Pop Art put paid to it finally.
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Unfortunately the “Emperor’s New Clothes” school of art persists. No man, it’s not just a meaningless pile of crap on a gallery floor and I’m not just a lazy, no-talent bum whose simply doing this as an excuse to drink lots at the expense of someone else. It’s questioning conventional modalities of historical discourse, it’s bringing up questions of identity. If you weren’t such fascist you’d see that.
“I believe the mythology of Art and Revolution was an artifact of the early 20th century avant-garde”
Actually, the revolution thing is a strategy that is used again and again. Look right across art history and it recurs. A younger group wishes to establish itself so how do they do it? Make out that the is an “old establishment” and try to find arguments as to why that group is no longer relevant. This was actually explicitly stated in the program by the games critic Yahtzee (with nods of approval from Westbury).
The cover story for the program is as you say “questioning conventional modalities of historical discourse” (whatever that really means) but the subtext is, I am suggesting rather different to that. What did the program really say? That the internet makes it possible for anyone to make art and for anyone else to make contact with it. Wow I didn’t know this! It would be more useful to discuss what the artistic potential for this is. And I do think its necessary to critique it because that way you can work out what the trends, connections and resonances of online art are (and by the way there is some wonderful things going on out there). Instead we got some pretty shallow statements like “get with technology or fuck off”.
Actually, the revolution thing is a strategy that is used again and again.
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Well I’m not sure that Caravaggio and his followers were using ‘revolution’ as their mantra, nor were the Dutch in deploying (a fairly revolutionary) approach to subject matter talking of same. But there is a rivalry of movements. generally, if there is genuine difference then I think that healthy.
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The cover story for the program is as you say “questioning conventional modalities of historical discourse”
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This comes straight from a senior arts bureaucrat and ‘artist’ giving a lecture of avante-garde art. He presented us with a video of himself suspended in a cage, naked unfortunately. Others stormed about the cage screeching and throwing wet clay (looking a lot like shit) at him.
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That was it.
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He said: And you can see how this questions conventional notions of history.
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I put my headphones on and started listening to music at that point.
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IMHO – The 20th century arts tore apart the conventional, that is, classical, views of what art should be in order to create something new. They did, many new techniques and ideas were generated. This was, at least in part, a response to the rise of chemical photography in the 19th century.
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However this idea that art should be about ‘smashing convention’ is a little passe considering there are no conventions. Last year I was talking to a young curator about what the standard for art these days is. He said: self-promotion.
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So it’s Art as Paris Hilton now?
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Ask me an Art should go back to basics. Re-investigate tradition and the relationship between us and Nature. And make something beautiful. No I’m not mandating some Boltian return to naff bourgeois landscapes circa 1834.
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Unfortunately we still have this entrenched hangover from the ’60s that promotes the ridiculous notion that Art=Politics. This gives rise to the foolish spectacle of gallery crowds lauding basic shite because it’s somehow addressing a social issue. The idea that you can change the world in this way is dumb. However it does rationalize a lot of bad work.
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All I can say is that there are good artists out there working and, for those who extol the virtues of ‘mainstream’ art discourse, please remember that the pre-Raphelites dominated the 19C fin-de-sicle. Van Gogh who?
It says a lot about how depressingly dumbed-down and vulgar the ABC has become when braindead pop sociology like this twaddle is given a run, while RN’s Religion Report is axed!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/tv–radio/abc-flagship-radio-shows-axed/2008/10/15/1223750110317.html
Que …?
Adrien, what on earth is your point? I can’t even work out whether you think the Pre-Raphaelites were a good thing or a bad thing.
Adrien, I’m not sure, but I think you are partly agreeing with me. Just an aside, I wonder what “Boltian bourgeois landscapes” might look like in urban Australia.
I think you guys are being a bit harsh – while the interviews didn’t always exactly sparkle, the broader points made were pretty valid in my opinion. One of the issues was that Marcus had a different director for this series, and I think a lot of the originality of the last season’s presentation tended to be lost in this year’s more “industry standard” format.
Ben, on tv series such as this it’s probably the Executive Producer who calls the shots creatively, with an eye towards ratings. Directors don’t really have a lot of control.
PC Adrien, what on earth is your point? I can’t even work out whether you think the Pre-Raphaelites were a good thing or a bad thing.
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I wasn’t expressing any view of the Pre-Raphaelites. For the record I like ‘em. But I also like Post-Impressionism. At the moment tho’ it’s 17th century all the way.
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The Pre-Raphaelites were amongst the dominant (academy approved) schools of Art in the late 19th century. They had continued the then traditional notion of ‘what Art is’ – Classical realistic depictions of mythological subjects. By the ’30s however they were relegated to the historical curiosity box – not important. Why? Because their aesthetics had been replaced by Modernists who drew upon Van Gogh, Cezanne et al.
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My point is that what seems to be the ‘in’ thing of the minute can become old hat quickly. Particularly if it persists with something that’s been done to death. Of course the Pre-Raphaelites did good work and have been subject to a positive revival in the last little while. Perhaps Avant-Garde Mannerism is soon to be on the nose and all those tedious exhibitions of uninspiring claptrap are soon for the recycling bin. At some point the good stuff will be likewise subject to revival.
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If there is any.
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Peter Mc – I do agree with you. Bolt’s favoured landscapes are the sort of bright pastel shaded kitsch one normally has to go to a Bible Belt thrift store to acquire. As it’s a picture of something he can understand it – hence it’s good.
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Ah.
OK, sorry about this, but the Pre-Raphaelites declared themselves a Brotherhood around 1850. Their presiding genius was Ruskin whose ideas about art were even more revolutionary than theirs, which were about specifically rejecting classicism, and their impetus for the formation of a new and breakaway movement, which is what they were, was the dedication to ultra-realism in colour and detail, in particular in depicting Mother Nature and (less heroically but just as devotedly) fabric and clothing. Oh and to a lesser extent narrative, hence lots of Biblical and medieval subject matter. Their influence had faded by the 1870s with (among other things) the onset of Art Nouveau — influenced by Pre-Raphaelite William Morris — and its practitioners, not least your countrypersons the great Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Somebody* Mackmurdo.
The Pre-Raphaelites are by way of being favourites of mine and I haven’t Googled them so bits and pieces of this may be wrong, but on the whole I now understand why I didn’t know what you were talking about.
*Fine old Scottish name
Indeed you’re quite right PC I stand corrected.
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I have a tendency to forget Art Nouveau. Still I think their own ideas about rejecting classical traditions in art are, considering the Modernist revolutions, nonsense. As is their idea that they rejected everything-y after Raphael. Personally I find their body fetishes a little like early Mannerism. But that’s just my opinion. A lot of the discourse viz Art and Lit in the 19th century, tho’ intense at the time, is a bit of a storm in a teaspoon these days.
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However I do believe my point about trends is still apt. You’re not sorry at all are you?
Speakin’ of Pre-Raphaelites sorta I discovered one of ‘em had a sister. Wrote some bits and pieces. Not bad at all.