So how was it for YOU?

Not all of Robert Grigolov’s work convinces me. Some of it seems like simple tricks pour épater les bourgeois. But isn’t part of the fun about discovering the value something has for you when taking out of a context which isn’t necessarily one you appreciate?

Why does the above installation have the title Dollar Bill? I don’t know. I have some ideas, but I don’t think I want to follow them. And, just as Daniel Pennac’s 10 Inalienable Rights of the Reader, so any spectator has similar rights, among them, to decide arbitrarily where the work begins and ends for her.

This doesn’t need to mean any sort of glorification of ignorance. However, it does accept it as part of the deal. After all, the spectator is no less free than the artist, is he?

This should be a very obvious question. Aesthetic relativism is something seemingly accepted. Yet the contemporary art world seems to specialize in “right” ways of looking at its creations.
Anything goes – yet there is still plenty of exciting space for dialogue. Tastes are indeed something we discuss and shape, aesthetic experience is a beautifuly shapeable thing. And yet one of the most difficult things is to stay within the play of common value-seeking and exploration of personal experience, and not move into the discourse of competence, the universe of authority, which might sustain a big chunk of what the contemporary art world is about, but is hardly enjoyable for those of us who like their artflesh stupendously raw and intimate.
(via)

To me it seems as though a lot of this… this work is people who are scared to live a life in the first place. Incredibly unradical people who play a game of a radical life within very safe confines of some Kunsthalle or other museum in Germany or France.

- Gavin Brown, gallerist, The Gavin Brown enterprise, about artists related to “relational aesthetics”.

The quote comes from a film by Ben Lewis called “Relational Art: Is It an Ism?” (2004).
What I like about the film is that it’s (sometimes) funny and doesn’t fuss around.
What irritated me though was that beyond the humor I kept feeling a bitterness I despise. So when we discover in the film that Ben Lewis used to make art (with vegetables) and then decided he wasn’t good at it and stopped, Lewis’ slightly too aggressive attempts to ridicule the artists he talks about become, well, put into context. I would love to see the rest of the Art Safari series to see if it’s juat the case of this episode, or is this the “intelligent irony” we should expect in every episode. (correction: I just realized I had seen an episode with Sophie Calle. And it’s pretty much the same thing).
But then… I found this famous article of his about the art world – “Who Put the Con in Contemporary Art?” which basically claims it’s all an evil world, a clique that only wants profits. And although I agree with some of the statements he is making, it’s the tone that really discredits him. (The joker became the prophet!) Especially given he is publishing on the site of… the Saatchi Gallery!


The paintings, (which in my humble opinion are rather unrelated to the topic of relational aesthetics), are by Peter Doig, at the Gavin Brown enterprise. (They are here because of solitude, reflection, one’s place in the world as an artist and a person. And skiing.)
The photo is by Ryan McGinley.

How do artists make a living?
Besides the selected few who actually make a living from their work, how can an artist afford to be an artist?
The bottom line is: should art pay for itself? Should it be efficient in an economic sense?
Most practicing artists either have money from their day jobs, or from their families.
The funny thing is: the first group seem heroic, and the second – fakes.
Why? Why is there so much resentment towards people who decide to spend the money they have on doing something they love?
Is it because we, as the public, feel betrayed, as if they stopped playing the game with their audience? After all, if they don’t care about (our, or government – which comes out to the same) money, aren’t we left aside?
(What’s wrong with being left aside? Hm. Of course, this modernist idea can come in handy. But I’ve been writing about it elsewhere.)
Come think of it – would we feel it wrong for a rich person to buy an expensive car? A big house? So why do we want him to feel guilty for spending the money into something we might actually appreciate? It turns art into a hobby, you say? So what?

Below, completely unrelated (at least not that I know), is the work of Paulo Ventura.

Writing a post is often like making a test. The etimology of essay comes to mind: an attempt. A blog is a great place for such attempts – yet at times it also gives space to texts I would rather not have written, ideas that were still premature or ungrounded, preconceived…
Yet this, I think, is the perfect space for such struggles, for discovering possible points of view one might feel tempted to adopt.
In my last post, I wrote about the move from product-based thinking about art to research-based thinking. The idea of a cultural universe that looks like a big lab is quite appealing to the artist (discovering is so exciting!), and often problematic for the public.
This is also related to the issue of funding: public money for such a private culture seems absurd. Why give money to people who don’t want to reach out to the society that supports them?
The excellent writer Alessandro Baricco recently wrote a very polemic article (here is a poor google-translation) criticizing the elitist dynamics of supporting culture, in which he suggested that public funding should be taken away from the likes of theater and opera, and instead moved to TV and education to create very ambitious programs and actually reach out to the masses and create a true evolving dialogue.
It’s a very strong and shocking article.
I went back to it after having written the previous post.
There was something about it that seemed profoundly wrong and unjust.
I think the film Il n´y a pas de Colin dans poisson, by Isabelle Taveneau, Zoé Liénard, and Odile Magniez, tells it wonderfully well:

In all the discourse about elitist art, we often forget that the consumers (yes, consumers) of this art are very often people and communities quite distant from what our stereotipical eyes seem to notice. Culture, when supported in a wise, and smart, way, is an ever-evolving process of education. Open-source, open-ended, and potentially surprizingly democratic. Having been teaching contemporary performance to groups of very varied milieus, I feel it all the time.

Here we are, now, entertain us.
In a comment to my last post, Matka wrote: Please, add a new piece soon! My internet explorer opens with your page and this work makes me seek [sick?] for a couple of hours.

Independent on whether this particular request should be executed or not, a serious issue creeps up behind: can we speak of a more or less bloggable material? Should we?
At first, there seems to be no doubt: a blog is personal by definition, right? The author decides what to put on it, and that’s it?
Not quite.
1) Any reader of art blogs will notice blogs have formulas and tend to stick to them (this is not just the case of art blogs, obviously). So there is a topic, an approach, a way of writing and really, a “strategy”. This can be a personal strategy, but it remains one.
2) In the case of art blogs, strong images work. That is, if you’re looking for an audience, don’t spend so much time writing: find attractive images. They can be shocking, but they have to be instantly rewarding for the spectator. And that’s disgusting, dear Matka.
There’s the rub: A blog is like a light version of a magazine. You drop by, take a glance, and in case of picture-filled blogs, if the image is not appealing, you move along. I see it in the stats, I know it (mea culpa) from autopsy. An art blog is, to a great extent, a mini-gallery. To a neophyte observer it might seem like people only take a glance and then leave. But after all, isn’t it about those few that stay a while and dwelve deeper?

It’s nice to be visited. And appreciated. And the more popular you are, the more, humm, popular you are.
The point is, it influences the choices you make. And all of a sudden, you know what sort of images work on the blog. And those are the ones you choose. Fast art consumption. It’s nice, it’s clean, we get it. Good, effective art.
Then the next step might be thinking about not offending Matka’s tastes. And that’s scary if you write a blog, (a personal page). But then, even if you don’t go that far, the blog, the site, gains a life of its own. And thenyou start listening in on what it wants.

Come to think of it, it’s not necessarily horrible. After all, it’s also the wonderful feeling of an object coming to life, gaining an identity. Indeed, in the case of this blog this life has been continuing even during my absences. And that’s a beautiful sight.
Yet it is still mine. Heheh…
And hopefuly, the lapse in Matka’s text did make sense: beyond making her sick, the image also makes her seek for a couple of hours.
And in case it doesn’t, here are a couple of replacement images. If anyone here can handle Japanese, please go here or here and let me know who is the artist, and what is going on, these sites seem creepy as hell…

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!