“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Over the holiday break, I read Will Gompertz’s What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye. Gompertz maintains that, for all its diversity, the essence of all modern art is to prioritize the idea over the medium, philosophy over technique and craft. The spirt of modern art is embodied in Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain:
As far as he [Duchamp] was concerned, the role in society of an artist was akin to that of a philosopher; it didn’t even matter if he or she could paint or draw. An artist’s job was not to give aesthetic pleasure — designers could do that; it was to step back from the world and attempt to make sense or comment on it through the presentation of ideas that had no functional purpose other than themselves
Justifiably, Gompertz’s explication of the early history of modern art is centred around Paris. But one could argue that he neglects important developments in other locations, especially Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. Just two paragraphs are dedicated to Gustav Klimt; Egon Schiele doesn’t even get a mention. But for a book of this scale and ambition, omissions are inevitable. In any case, Gompertz cannot be accused of false advertising; this is, after all, art history in “the blink of an eye.“
One of the main strengths of the book is that it situates the various modern art movements within their historical context. And what emerges from this are some interesting anecdotes for the political economist.
Gompertz notes how Impressionism had emerged alongside profound changes in the class structure of French society. The bourgeoisie, the “nouveau riche middle class,” were drawn to the Impressionist scenes which depicted their own lifestyles. The decision to paint the bourgeoisie consuming and enjoying leisure wasn’t due to the untainted interests of the Impressionist artist. French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had a hand in influencing the Impressionists to paint these types of scenes to cater to the emerging bourgeoisie. By encouraging young painters to paint smaller pictures for middle class buyers of more modest means, Durand-Ruel even helped to spawn the first mass market for art.
Then there’s Constructivism, an artistic movement borne out of Soviet Communism. In 1921, one of the leaders of the constructivism, Aleksandr Rodchenko, penned a manifesto calling for the movement to change its name to Productivism. The name change was meant to reflect a changing ethos.According to Gompertz, the purpose of Productivist art should be to produce things that are useful. In his words, Productivists “became designers, fulfilling Lenin’s demand to broaden their contribution to society.” This is a good example of how the assumptions of Marx’s labour theory of value come to have a very real impact on the real world.
From the perspective political economy, the most fascinating part of the book might be the discussion of the most recent period of modern art from roughly 1988 to 2008. For lack of a better term, Gompertz refers to the most recent period as “Art Now,” which is characterized by entrepreneurialism.
This new brand (literally) of artist is self-assured and self-promoting, unabashedly gearing their artistic work toward money-making. This business-oriented artist-entrepreneur has no qualms about commodifying their creative output. The artist of the Art Now era has managed to achieve both fame and fortune, as most successful amongst them have become multi-millionaires thanks to the recent art market boom.
Although it’s a challenge, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to contemporary art. I try to judge it on its own terms. And the terms of contemporary art are that we judge it not based on the medium, craft, or aesthetic value, but on the ideas that lie behind it. As long as we judge art on its ideas, then we must be willing to suspend judgement of the shameless self-promotion, the commercialism, and even the lack of political edge.
There are many examples of contemporary art that embodies great ideas. Damien Hirst’s A Thousand Years — a large glass installation containing a dead cow’s head, bowls of sugar, flies and maggots, and an insect-electrocutor — offers a clever, if not totally profound, take on the circle of life. Sarah Lucas’s Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab is an elegant comment on gender, one that is imbued with symbolism.
But I struggle to see the ideational value in some contemporary art. A good example comes from the Neo-Dadist work of Robert Rauschenberg, which preceded Art Now. Rauschenberg’s famous Monogram installation contains a stuffed goat with a tire draped around its midsection. What exactly is the idea behind this piece? Gompertz does a heroic job of speculatively deciphering its meaning.
The goat reflects the artists love of animals, the fleece from the Angora goat was use to make US Army uniforms and could reflect the artist’s time in the military, the tire is a reference to the artist’s childhood, who grew up near a tire factory, a mended shirtsleeve in the piece is reflective of the artist’s improverished childhood, and so on.
Almost all of the symbolism in Monogram is autobiographical. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with autobiography per se. But what sort of autobiography is Rauschenberg telling? I love animals, was once enrolled in the army, and grew up poor near a tire factory. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff. Symbolism for symbolism’s sake has inherent limits.
Another example comes directly from the Art Now period. Tracey Emin’s Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963-1995, is a tent with the names of the 102 people that had slept with, or beside, Emin stitched to its interior. Unlike Rauschenberg’s Monogram, Gompertz conspicuously offers no interpretation of this particular piece by Emin. Again, the work is clearly autobiographical. But what exactly is the idea here? What does the piece offer beyond a cataloguing of Emin’s own personal history and experiences?
The problem here is not autobiography, nor the fact that the examples in question are focused on the individual. Instead, it’s the precise form of individualism that characterizes these examples of contemporary art. This is the individual detached from collective, social experience. The autobiographical symbols are intensely personal, but let’s face it: they’re also pretty banal. In fact, the art in question is unable to form the basis for some shared, inter-subjective understanding of the world, something that should be the basis for any good idea. These examples of contemporary art are representative of some of the worst traits of contemporary society: self-indulgence bordering on narcissism.
As Gompertz explains, one of the aims of the early pioneers of modern art like Duchamp was to challenge the idea that “artists are somehow a higher form of human life.” The tendency has always been to treat artists with god-like reverence, as exceptionally intelligent, gifted, and wise. “Artists took themselves and they were taken far too seriously.”
Yet in an ironic twist, Art Now has led to the emergence of the artist-entrepreneur, the celebrity treated with almost cult like reverence. Previously artists were revered, but the personality always took the back seat the work of art. Now artists are revered precisely for being artists. The individual artist has become the art. If that is not elevating artists as a “higher form of human life,” then I don’t know what is.