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 s faithful readers
know, I am a true Renaissance man. Humani nihil a me alienum
puto, and there is no sphere of human endeavor into which I
have not, at one time or another, peered inquisitively, grasped
the fundamentals more or less immediately, and formed a well-rounded
opinion — which, of course, I am ready to defend to the death.
I am willing to admit, though, that while I know something about
everything, I know much more about some things than others; and
among those topics about which my stock of knowledge is perilously
close to the minimum required to pontificate confidently, is art.
I have done
my best with art. The subject was lit up for me briefly in my teens
by a charismatic teacher. Then I learned some more in my college
years (though on my own, not from college teachers) to impress girls.
I have dutifully trudged round most of the big European and American
galleries at one time or another, believing — as I still believe
— that some acquaintance with beautiful objects, made by masters
steeped in a grand tradition, is an important part of the mental
furniture of any civilized person. I know the great names; I know
their main works; I know rococo (joyful, airy) from baroque (grave,
solid), and Manet (girls) from Monet (lilies); I know enough to
give my kids a start, anyway.
The key word
there, though, is "dutifully." I never really got
art. It never really "took" with me. Every visit I have
ever made to an art gallery has been motivated by some un-aesthetic
impulse: vanity, guilt, duty, curiosity, boredom, lust. I can't
say I have ever really enjoyed looking at paintings or sculptures.
I'm a words guy, not a pictures guy. If a genie were to tell me
that the human race would, from tomorrow on, by my irrevocable decision,
be deprived for ever of EITHER all the poems in the Oxford Book
of English Verse OR the entire contents of the Louvre, I wouldn't
hesitate for a nanosecond — the Louvre would have to go.
All of which,
you might say, disqualifies me from passing opinions on art, art
exhibitions, and art prizes. Not a bit of it! I may be a little
shaky on the difference between chiaroscuro and tenebroso,
but I know the real thing when I see it. I know that "art"
is just an old word for "skill," and that nothing worthy
of being called art is created without skill — studied, sweated,
endlessly practiced skill, preferably lit from within by
the glow of inborn natural talent and divine guidance. Knowing this,
I am ready to pronounce with full confidence on the latest Turner
prize.
The Turner
prize, in case you don't know, is one of the most prestigious art
awards in the western world, given every year by London's Tate Gallery
for a body of work whose creator has demonstrated outstanding ability
and originality. The winner then chooses an item to put on display.
The prize is worth £20,000 (about $30,000). This year's award
went to 33-year-old Martin Creed for an exhibit that consisted of
an empty room with lights that flicker on and off every five seconds.
Mr. Creed's previous exhibits include a scrunched-up sheet of plain
typing paper, a piece of plasticine stuck to a wall, and neon signs
bearing cheery messages. The award was presented Tuesday night by
Madonna.
Prior to the
announcement of Mr. Creed's triumph, the favorite for the prize
was Mike Nelson, who (I am quoting here from a British newspaper
report) "works with rubbish," and whose prize submission
was a pile of planks. The other shortlisted artists were Richard
Billingham, exhibiting photos of his alcoholic father, who lives
in a Glasgow slum, and Isaac Julien, who entered some short films
about homosexual cowboys. (Inspired, I suppose, by that old Cesar
Romero movie The Gay Caballero...)
Approving comments
on Mr. Creed's exhibit came from all over the art world. The prize
judges said, in a joint statement, that: "The lights going
on and off have qualities of strength, rigor, wit and sensitivity
to the site." Mr. Simon Wilson, the Tate Gallery's communications
curator (there's glory for you!) called the work "pure and
spiritual." Creed, he added, "is a very pure extreme kind
of artist. The fact that many people find his work so baffling indicates
that he's working on the edge." (Note the flimsy non sequitur
on which all this bogus "art "rests: It's obscure, so
it must be profound. You can get away with that in the visual arts,
but not in literature, where "obscure" only ever means
one thing: badly written.) The artist himself, asked to explain
why the lights flicker, elucidated thus: "It activates the
whole of the space it occupies without anything physically being
added and I like that because in a way it's a really big work with
nothing being there... It's like, if I can't decide whether to have
the lights on or off, then I have them both on and off and I feel
better about it."
What do I think
about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate
Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be
locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust
off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal
porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed
all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round
Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he
should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery
should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted
away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then
the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should
be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover,
and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and
crabs.
Oh, all right:
In a free country, people should be left alone to ingest dog poop,
if that's what they want to do. Cancel the boxcars. I do think,
though, that the fact of a worthless fraud like Mr. Creed being
able to attain fame and fortune with his absurd "works of art"
should make anyone who cares about our civilization cringe and weep.
It is all very well to say that people should be able to do what
they like with their money (which seems nowadays to include your
money and my money, too: "art" everywhere is heavily subsidized
from taxation). But public awards like the Turner Prize are not
private matters. They are statements that we — we, this culture;
we, this civilization — make about ourselves, to the world
and to posterity. The statement being made this week by the Turner
Prize judges is: "We are a culture of driveling nincompoops,
who would not know real talent, skill and inspiration if they whacked
us over the head with a loaded pool cue." To drive home the
point, to add insult to injury, they delegated the prize-giving
to Madonna, a talentless self-promoter, the very epitome of everything
trashy, stupid, dirty, meretricious (look up the etymology), mindless
and antisocial in our godforsaken culture.
There are,
of course, real artists, doing real work, all over the Western world
— struggling through all kinds of difficulties and obscurity
to keep the magnificent tradition alive, and push it forward an
inch or two. What a pity that the little attention they can get
for their work in a frivolous, easily distracted age is diluted
and embarrassed by the antics of charlatans. And what is the economics
of this Turner Prize "art"? Is someone going to buy Mr.
Creed's room and install it in his house? Set one of Mike Nelson's
heaps of rubbish out on his front lawn for passers-by to admire?
Festoon his living-room all round with photos of Richard Billingham's
dipso dad? Amuse his houseguests with showings of Mr.. Julien's
buggering bronco-busters? How does this ludicrous charade maintain
itself?
"There's
one born every minute," said P. T. Barnum. On hearing which,
his assistant enquired: "But where do all the rest of them
come from?"
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