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JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU BELIEVE THIS IS SIMPLY PR FOR SAATCHI NOT ART AND THAT CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE U.K. HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A SUCCESSION OF PR STUNTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CREATORS.

X-FACTOR FOR ART?

Artists bid to catch Saatchi’s eye

(UKPA) – 17 minutes ago

Six hopefuls are aiming to be the next big thing by being granted the tutelage of art world supremo Charles Saatchi in a new TV talent search.

At stake is the chance to be given exposure on the international scene by art industry “kingmaker” Saatchi by featuring in one of his exhibitions.

The virtual unknowns – Suki Chan, Matt Clark, Eugenie Scrase, Saad Qureshi, Ben Lowe, Samuel Zealey – have been whittled down from an initial 12 who will be seen starting the series in the first episode of School Of Saatchi, broadcast on BBC Two.

Despite lending his name to the series and making the final judgment on the winner, publicity-shy Saatchi is not actually seen on screen.

Expert panellists in the show, including Tracey Emin, art collector Frank Cohen and the critic Matthew Collings, helped to advise Saatchi during the selection process

The six artists – chosen for their raw talent and creative edge – will be seen attending a unique art school, established just for them, where over the course of ten weeks they were able to develop their skills.

Collings said: “Opportunities like this do not arise every day and in most people’s lives they never arise. These artists have got to come up with something that’s got to be impressive so there’s a great deal of pressure that Saatchi is putting on them.”

Saatchi will eventually choose one of the artists to exhibit their work at Newspeak: British Art Now, his exhibition at The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Also at stake is a free studio which the winner can use for three years.

(read less)
JOIN THIS GROUP IF YOU BELIEVE THIS IS SIMPLY PR FOR SAATCHI NOT ART AND THAT CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE U.K. HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A SUCCESSION OF PR STUNTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CREATORS.

X-FACTOR FOR ART?

Artists bid to catch Saatchi’s eye

(UKPA) – 17 minutes ago

Six hopefuls are aiming to be the next big thing by being granted the tutelage of art world supremo Charles Saatchi in a new TV talent search.

At stake is the chance to be given exposure on the international scene by art industry… (read more)
Privacy type:
Open: All content is public.

Art World Friezing over???

Bloomberg reports that the London art market has fallen 80% in a year and that Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales alongside this year’s Frieze fair will collapse from £107 million to nearer £20 million. In the current climate people are not spending or looking for better value for money which means the Affordable Art Fair will probably de well..

http://www.affordableartfair.co.uk

http://www.friezeartfair.com/

Bloomberg report

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=af38gWeq_1pQ

Twang Scaffold

Twang Scaffold

At Last!

A collaborative regenerative interpretive art solution for urban squares
utilising cross disciplinary theatre, building trades/ schizophrenia and gaffer tape and puppets

Backed by several leading academic institutions, a bloke from Hucknall who runs a scaffold business and a few art students.

‘cutting edge building materials ‘ said The Builder

‘helps people in two minds to make it up’ said Mind Journal (eventually)

Regenerates urban spaces with scaffolding in a subtle almost invisible way….apart from the scaffold’ – Nottingham City Council Arts Department ( ring Mondays only)

‘Tremendous and fab’ Community Arts for The Dispossessed and Afghanistan Council

‘its a bloke hitting a scaffold pole with a brick..that’s not art’ – a philistine member of the public

OXYMORON

nottingham CREATIVE BUSINESS awards

Hill of money – mountains of cash

It has come to my attention that the Arts Council of England. A glorious body of noble souls are at this time perusing some submissions for a large wad of cash – 12 X £5000,000 – for specific art projects related to the glorious Olympiad of 2012.

Now I thought that every hair-brained, stupid artistic nonsense in the world had been explored..but no..where there’s money there’s crap to reverse the old adage…

An individual has proposed a fake hill somewhere in a Midland City centre…….yes you read rightly..a hill……there being no real, natural or god help us any reshaped urban landscape already available….hills are hard to come by these days…..

On said hill would occur many an artistic event, you name it the application scrapes it up..interventions, installations, finger painting , rap concerts..it is as wonderful a fiesta of all that truly original and beautiful in the U.K. arts scene as any arts officer has ever seen….maybe even a dolphin in an aquarium if the money doesn’t run out?

In yours and my name the infallible Arts Council will build a tawdry heap which no doubt will collapse after construction and how much carbon will be used in constructing this edifice to stupidity???

Enough is enough! That such a stupid piece of self promoting garbage has actually got through the submission process shows the gullibility and fatuous nature of our supposed Council of the Arts…..

I suggest a pressure group to stop this kind of garbage in its tracks before it pays the protagonists mortgages and leaves everybody else bemused and angered….

Conceptualist

Turner Prize

Mid-Career Artist

Retro

Hoops

Poor

Table

Mother ACE

Careers advice

Career opportunities

Shit

One Man Show

90% crap 1% inspiration

Mr. Starchy

Daddy’s Girl

Shrigley

Little England

The Art Critic

Art City U.K.

World class…

Moogee returns…

http://moogee.wordpress.com/

Yes that damn dog is back and this time he’s got sharper teeth..

World's Largest Henry Moore?

After all the gnashing of artist’s brushes over Wallinger’s Horse maybe we should honour my hometown’s pile of concrete instead ..to be frank I prefer the Power Station Indeed Marina Warner argued for its preservation after it decommissioned as a Modernist Monument to the age of power and energy consumption..that may be sooner than we think..

source: http://edvaizey.mpblogs.com/2009/01/03/didcot-home-to-the-worlds-largest-henry-moore/

Didcot, Home to the World’s Largest Henry Moore
Didcot has just got a new arts centre, but this is not the town’s first foray into the arts. Mark Hedges, the editor of Country Life, has the memory of an elephant, Shortly after meeting me, he sent me an article from Country Life dated 3rd May 2007, which was an interview with Howard Colvin, the architectural historian. colvin is quoted as saying “I remember we [the Fine Art Commission] were shown scale models of the cooling towers for Didcot power station and Henry Moore spent ages moving them around to create a good composition. I saw them the other day from the train and think he did rather a good job”. So there you have it, Didcot, home to Henry Moore’s largest sculpture

Altermodernism is the new world order…discuss..

This just about summed up how clapped out and inane the contemporary art scene is….not content with just posing inane speculative theory grounded in nothing or as Bourriaud states..

Like modernism and postmodernism, though, it’s not easy to sum up in a sentence. When I ask for the one-line Wikipedia version of the theory, Bourriaud is cautious, saying it is a ­complex idea that can’t be simplified (FYI, Wikipedia defines altermodern as “an ­attempt at branding art made in today’s global ­context” and says it’s part of a commercialism backlash).

Bourriaud, who co-founded Paris gallery Palais de Tokyo and has ­written influential­ tomes on art theory, describes today’s superstars like Hirst as making “very static artworks” which are on their way out.

from The London Paper

Well there you have it – it too sophisticated to be explained…..I was going to give it benefit of doubt but when I see an article proclaiming a ‘new world order’ illustrated by a picture of a man wearing a badger on his head ( Marcus Coates – I kid you not:-) here it is…well what point satirising..it done for me…)

The basis of alter modernism is ‘it moves around a bit’ ..because of age of mass travel stupid artists can move around the globe being well..stupid and that’s ok?

The fact that it attempts to replace ‘postmodernism’ ( i.e. real theories based in real world) with a theory based on ‘travel’ just at point where the collapse of capitalism will mean fewer artists travelling ..indeed most will find it hard getting work of any kind is ludicrous in the extreme. Like many so-called ‘movements’ before the design of the catalogue is good (..proper design agency Paris involved) and we have the conceit of welding disparate concerns into a box of the curator’s ideas…(typical posture – there been goodness how many attempts in last two decades to get WOW factor moving again post..’Sensation’ Saatchi’s ragbag advertising coup which enfeebled subsequent generations of British artists). So now we all ‘altermodern’. Bullshit.

Bourriaud is a typical game-player and self-publicist and shame on the Tate for falling for his inept trendy theories and shocking lack of substance but as we live in an age of form over content and curator over artist I am no longer surprised. There will be decent work in the show even Bourriaud will get it right occasionally but as for a new movement….just ask Friends of the Earth or any serious grounded envoronmental artist if the new world order one of travel…exactly…

Maybe curators can travel first class in the new world order…for the rest of us its buses and tubes as usual and drivel from on high whether it be banker or man with badger on head……

Love to hear Brian Sewell on this…for now Ben Lewis does a lovely job on it

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/show-23592557-details/Altermodern:+Tate+Triennial+2009/showReview.do?reviewId=23636018

CODA
From Moogee on Guardian blog in response to Charlotte Higgins on Wallinger’s Geegee..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog

As Marcus Coates is presently being touted as a symbol of Nicholas Bourriaud’s ‘Altermodern New World Order’ for wearing a badger on his head maybe we could build a statue of Nicholas with his head up a horse’s rear instead?

Thereby we would not only be creating a visual affirmation of our own cutting-edgeness but also showing a clear sign to our continental knowledge economy rivals of how brilliant we are….of course it would not be built of local cement that no longer exists….a bit like the Oxford Mini..a casualty of global market I’m afraid but the frisson of the impermanent would tie in beautifully with the altermodern golbal perspective…in fact lets retrain all the unemployed car workers to be curators ..

On second thought lets just forget the whole thing and spend the money wisely instead ….a very modernist idea whose time may finally have come….

CODA 2 and 3

Wallinger is a ray of sunshine in a bleak artworld..I like Charlotte will look forward to the show..
see my comment on M.W. from 2008 here..

http://belcheresque.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/art-politics-ed-vaizey/

A more compliant bunch than that would be hard to find. Indeed Wallinger stands out as one of few artists who had more in common with the left wing artists of 1970’s e.g. Conrad Atkinson than their cash-laden capitalist benefactors. To see how the colour supplement crowd actually got into bed with mass-marketing (most notably with Charles S.) and how that coincided with a lot of spare ‘profit’ from banking in late 1980’s is a book unwritten…they went hand in hand of course….

BUT…

how the hell did he end up being involved in something as rightwing as spurious regeneration

If his politics are to be believed ( and I do believe he sincere) did he do it for a joke and it all gone terribly wrong….???

sad…

I just read Jilly Cooper on said horse…it so stunningly idiotic a piece of writing it defies satire..just read it for oneself….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/12/ebbsfleet-landmark-art-jilly-cooper
British culture is in safe hands….or should that be whip hand?

I wonder if she would have said same if it had been a giant statue of a car worker with his nether regions exposed towards Europe?….

the enthusiasm may not be so great then eh Jilly

toodle pip darlings….

Postmodernism is dead? Really?

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm

Altermodern
Manifesto
POSTMODERNISM IS DEAD
A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity.

Nicolas Bourriaud
Altermodern – Tate Triennial 2009
at Tate Britain
4 February – 26 April 2009

Eyeblog review
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=150

Dancing on the YBA grave…

A response to a Jonathan Jones blog entry on the Guardian website
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/jan/30/contemporary-british-art-recession?

A generation of lo-fi subversives may finally have found something to be lo-fi and subversive about. After all, Hirst, Whiteread and their generation found their striking voices at a moment of recession.

The artists who think like this are kidding themselves.

Thankyou JJ I am pleased if I dumped in the ‘Lo-Fi’ bin with all the rest….sadly you utterly wrong because as an urban white middle class professional you cannot see past the ring-fence that been in operation for the past twenty years and which the ‘revolutionary joy’ about which you complain actually directed at….put simply I live and have lived outside that area for most of my life until now…ironically…you have no knowledge or experience of that so how could you comment or are you thinking of the shallow subversives of our modern art schools as they the only ones you ever met?

see Nick Cohen on this factor here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/25/television
as he says..

In general, though, literary writers and filmmakers (AND ARTISTS/CRITICS my addition!) had little interest in deprivation and wealth, and failed to see the connections between the two. Raised in public-sector families, educated in universities and working in academia, they were the artistic equivalents of Westminster’s political class: narrow professionals with few experiences of life beyond their trade. No writer is obliged to write a state-of-England novel, but so few wanted to that the critic DJ Taylor complained in 2007 of “the fatal detachment of the modern ‘literary’ writer from the society that he or she presumes to reflect”.

Two generations of artists were as badly damaged as they were helped by the art market YBA years…..one of my best friends actually committed suicide because of it because of the depression of trying to survive with skills in a market which dumped those values and rode the stock market instead…..money and trash made good bedfellows …

So I found my subversive voice now have I??…sorry wrong again.

I like some others have been subversive since day I left Hornsey back in 1981…..I and others like me walked away and turned our backs on this parade of Goldsmiths driven rubbish and were ignored or worse pitied for our opposition.

There is no glee in my heart at all just a sad realisation that not only real lives but art school ethics and skills training has been dumped along with the giant YBA baby……Hirst was a giant Cuckoo in a very small nest who managed to distort a difficult occupation into an impossible one…now a lot of magpies, rooks and ravens are coming home to roost….they will pick a lot of corpses bare not just Hirsts….

CODA

Yesterday by some quirk of nature I found myself cheek by jowel with Mr Saatchi along with a dear friend who has been painting brilliantly in a council flat with no support from state or bankers for 30 years…..it was a strange moment to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea of real artistic talent…..I know which knew more about art….

The only difference between them was about a few million pounds…..I have no doubt Mr.S believes he right and doing good for artists…I do not think he was right and the period of YBA you identify RIP YBA 1991 – 2007 is just another lazy soundbite piece of journalism…. the rot had set in way before and the damage will last far longer and goes far deeper than you realise…

Does this matter in face of mass poverty and recession probably not…..make hay while the sun still shines for its going to be a bitterly cold year in all the arts….I take no joy at all in any of this….

In fact I trying to rebuild from ground zero like a lot of others……the view from the ivory tower is over….

Moogee

Art spider says…

It’s over….

Calm down…

Famous when your dead…

Truth about the gallery system…

Fuming…

Fine solipism

Not Munch good

Nobody told me…

Heap of …..

Thatcher R.I.P.

De Capo

The New Depression Gallery

To be serious for a moment (it happens) the last post  from Badam saddens me greatly. I too was a ’serious’ artist with unpaid bills, a freezing studio, an interview at Goldsmiths (same year as Hirst if accepted..I wasn’t ..too serious for the times it appears..Fuller/Bacon self-portraiture didn’t ‘hang’ well with a interview panel of a graphic designer, a conceptualist and a student who hung black bin liners in rows…I kid you not.. to look for the real tale of why art where it is go to the enfeeblement of the art schools by profit and Thatcherism and YBA’s)…

I hung in there in the starving artist manor a lot longer than most – in fact until 2004 when I finally did teacher training and I now teach multimedia students.

What saddens me is that Saatchi being a willey coyote knows that with the collapse of state support as grants and the recession hit the art schools we will see a downturn in both student numbers and ability as working class students fail to make the financial sacrifices demanded of them. What chance a new Hockney, Moore or dare I say it Hirst these days??

Then Hey Presto! here comes a new income stream for his ‘global reach’. No longer able to afford art school ..just log on and become a famous artist Charles’s way…no need for time consuming education. The fact that one in a million becomes your betting chance of success as opposed to 1 in 25 or less AFTER graduating from the Royal College or any other Art School (official statistics reveal that you may become a teacher but a successful artist….well you have a cat in Emins chance)

So as art education collapses for lack of support who better to take over the education of our new ‘elite’ than…Saatchi Enterprises..who was rumoured to be preparing his own Art School as we speak..privately funded of course and what better way to promote it than getting prime time BBC2 coverage to get it going…no fool that one.

He no more interested in the talent than Lloyd Webber……their real talent is pushing their tie-in profit making concerns..via these programmes…pure Cowellism.

Musicals or Singers or Artists its all the same racket….

As for Badem…do it for yourself mate there are no silver linings, no Galleries paved with gold…..my lesson in reality started early.

Unable to attend a Royal College M.A. in painting because Thatcher slashed funds I wandered into a gallery with some slides….

‘Don’t bother showing me the slides’ said the gallery owner..
“Dear boy we toddle along to the Royal College M.A. every year and pick the ones with prizes’ They choose for us the rest like you are forgotten….”

How true…

So well done Charles for proving that nothing ever changes..as for poor students…at least they don’t have to waste years paying off loans..they can be rejected from the get-go.

A Rake’s Progress indeed?

I shall be first in line for dismissal in The new Depression Gallery….

You had it Cumming

Laura Cumming finally gets it right????????….

It is not only the artists and galleristas that at fault but also the reams of mediocrity served up by so called critics who happy to party on their benefactors terms until the party over…

It is obvious to anyone with eyes that art has become more vulgar and rebarbative during our lifetime, as well as slicker and quicker. Whether we will ever progress to anything better – more subtle, refined, intelligent, inventive, perhaps even original – is anyone’s guess, but these hard times have got to be propitious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/25/art

Some of us have been saying that for years dear..glad you finally seen the light..

Funny Ms Cumming didn’t mention any of this when covering some of the major players in last ten years but when the mood changes hey presto..to be fair she has shown more sense than most..not as much as Robert Hughes but then you talking different class…

How come it was so great in 2007 and so bad now Ms Cumming or are there no freebies any more, no dazzling parties, no paid tickets to the balls…?

Yes these are good times for art – lets kill all the fat and fatuous geese..and some critics too for good measure..Hughes would never have written tosh like this …..allegedly a report on the Venice Biennale of 2007 by one L.C….cake and eat it comes to mind ???

A golden crop, a vintage year: that is the main news from Venice, with a better ratio of hits to duds than any biennale in decades. This is no small matter since the Greatest Show on Earth is now so huge – 800 artists, every continent represented – that it overflows one island and spills through six others, not including the fanciful ‘occupation’ of the city’s floating necropolis by two artists demanding last rites for the Swedish monarchy.

But the other good news is that this year’s director, the well-respected Robert Storr, has organised such a strong international exhibition that it makes the tortuous miles of the Arsenale count as never before and puts the national pavilions in proper perspective. Storr’s thesis in ‘Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind’ – that conceptualism is the lingua franca of global art – may sound obvious but it’s allowed him to group together many giants of contemporary art. Where else are you going to find Louise Bourgeois, Ellsworth Kelly, and Sigmar Polke superbly displayed alongside the great film-works of Yang Fudong, the droll paintings of Raoul de Keyser and the fabulously groovy portraits of Malik Sidibe, the African photographer who has won this year’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (the prize for best pavilion is not announced until October), not to mention dozens of upcoming stars? If only the whole thing could be flown afterwards to Tate Modern what a momentous innovation that would be …

MOMENTOUS..or CRAP? Your call…over to you L.C.

Moogee waits with baited dog breath….

X-Factor for art – the arts devalued

Reality TV has nothing to offer the art world

Charles Saatchi, the Citizen Kane of the art world, is about to transform himself into the Andrew Lloyd Webber of art.

A new BBC2 series, Saatchi’s Best of British, will see him preside over a contemporary art reality show, comparable with Lloyd Webber’s I’d Do Anything. Talented hopefuls (I’ve put that phrase in as blog-fodder …) will attend his “intensive art school, where they will be tutored by top contemporary artists.” The show will “attempt to discover the next Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin.” Well, I don’t suppose anyone would expect it to discover the next Cy Twombly or Jasper Johns. Continue reading…

I cannot really add to this ..the final nail in ‘brit art’ seems like a good comment to make..note the ‘judges’..they not artists of any worth just spurious artists-cum-celebrity types I expect..Creed, Emin, whatever…step forward for some exposure as your sales plummet darlinks…

It time all of this sh*t was bagged up and tagged with its true nature..i.e. it celebrity compost nothing more…

The saddest part is that those who pretend to know what they on about i.e. Arts Council and various arts organisations are terribly impressed by all this ‘exposure’, they long ago gave up pretending they could invoke any form of standards so now we have no common principles to work to..so quality and talent are jettisoned for ‘fame’ and joke opportunism like this.

Nothing here wasn’t flagged up long ago by the Saatchi website….if you allow people with no values and no taste to dictate to you then you get the artworld you deserve.

I for one long ago stopped playing in the saatchi sandpit and looked to people with true value to provide a deifferent definition of ’standards’. Sorley Maclean in poetry, Howard Hodgkin in painting, Ken Loach in film there plenty of real artists around just they haven’t been much favoured in Saatchi Land’s carnival of minor celebrities……people of substance….not telly addled clowns…

For those with short memories there was a hilarious version of art school where various ‘intellect-challenged’ Chelsea School of Art scenesters tried to teach various celebrities to make art…a forerunner of this barrel-scraper of an idea…..

In that show such ‘artists’ as shown below changed the art world forever

Looks like this will be much the same…..i.e. rubbish

At least John Humphrys said what he thought….doubt if anybody in Saatchi Show will…oh and BBC2 as well- What a shameful waste of taxpayers money sayeth the man on the Battersea omnibus…if you don’t succeed give up next time and save us all the effort….

Five celebrities – John Humphrys, Ulrika Jonsson, Keith Allen, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Radio 1 DJ Nihal Arthanayake – are filmed taking part in a two-week crash course in fine art with tutors from the Chelsea College of Art. The series culminates in an exhibition; Winkleman’s role is to interview them throughout the fortnight.

Yes the artworld is waiting with baited breath for the shows judges to be revealed……

Here my betting slips…

Hester Von Blumenthal the III

fresh from revitalising Little Chef the cheeky chappy from the fat duck shows that the thin line between art and fine cookery is non-existant. Hester reveals that his whole premise for being a chef was it a stepping stone to being the greatest artist since Hogarth….his crispy fried duck will be shown at next year’s Venice Biennale as an example of site-specific cuisine..

Jade Goody
Jade has been doing body art for a few years now and will bring a fresh and provocatively ’street’ angle to the art world….she already in talks with the Gagossian gallery for a major retrospective (after Madonna’s) and has let slip that Emin and Goody will open a new gallery in 2010 focussing on Fashion as Art….

finally the greatest artist in the world…..yes Rolf Harris will down tools for a second. Long enough to bring a much needed sense of tradition and actual technical ability to bear on our assembled ‘conceptualists’ , ’site-specificers’ and ‘film makers’. Rolf will show them the correct end of the brush to use in episode one before doing an in-depth anlysis of the horrors of sable hair-plucking in a co-production with the RSPCA. Chanel Plus and some Tokyo cable channel.

I also hear there a famous surprise guest….yes….after disinterring Picasso’s bones his corpse will be ‘re-animated’ by forensic scientists in a tie-in with Waking the Dead. It is hoped that Picasso’s involvement will bring a much-needed sense of dignity to the show.

It rumoured that the winner will get to produce a family portrait of the Saatchis ‘en plein air’ like Stubbs…..a treat indeed

keep watching punters it can only get better from here on in….

Recession TV and Bankrupt ideas .com copyright all rights reserved….

The Golden Goose is dead….

Splendid article in today’s Guardian on rise and recent fall of feeble art world prices…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/17/art-buying-recession

This my comment on the article..

I have been tapping on a very isolated typewriter in the cold northern lands here for a long time on just the point Mr. Jack makes so well.

The artists and dealers scurried after the Pied Piper of Hamlyn (Hirst obvious contender for that role) as the dollars flowed in and serious thought was jettisoned as the party got ever wilder and beneficial to those who swallowed the hype and lies.

Throughout this insane carnival anybody who suggested this was an era of ‘emperer’s new clothes’ was seen as ‘an outsider’, ’stupid’ or worse an obvious Sewell like reactionary and not ‘cutting edge’ enough………..

Now the tables are bare now and the feast is over…..

time for some reality cheques it seems…

as I wrote recently on

Contemporary Art Criticism (note use of word ‘criticism’ here it been in very very short supply recently)

http://belcheresque.wordpress.com

These artists offer artworks that are imitative, illustrational and sometimes simply non-sensical….but they act the part proffering a oblique sense of their own worth as ‘art objects’ no matter that their formation based on pilfering and quotation not inward depth.

When the physical nature of an art/i/fact is surrendered totally to intellectual ‘re-fabrication’ the fabric itself becomes immaterial (literally) – disolved and drowned in dissonance and (dis)illusion.

No more rabbits in artist’s hats please we had enough of smoke and mirrors however Derrida-esque…

• willwordsmith

  17 Jan 09, 11:23am (16 minutes ago)

  Spot on Mr Jack.

  hroughout this insane carnival anybody who suggested this was an era of ‘emporer’s new clothes’ was seen as ‘an outsider’, ’stupid’ or worse an obvious Sewell like reactionary and not ‘cutting edge’ enough………..

  Spot on, Moogee.

  How many times during the ‘artistic’ bollocks boom did we hear the pompous w**kers comment disdainfully, “Oh, you just don’t get it!” The owl’s voice of reason was drowned out by the cackling of geese.

  Now it’s starvation time, and what happens to geese when people are hungry?

Moogee

17 Jan 09, 11:30am (9 minutes ago)

We have a ‘Goose Fair’ here in Nottingham where farmer’s would herd their geese to be sold or eaten…Its name is derived from the thousands of geese that were driven from Lincolnshire to be sold in Nottingham.

I suggest a revival of this tradition but this time we drive the thousands of ‘Golden Geese’ artists who lets face it are now moribund and useless…no longer able to gorge on the bankers golden corn …

Bring them to Nottingham stick them in a pen and get rid to highest bidder or let fade away…

Tis time to clear the decks of sloth and chaff methinks.

Happy New Year

Waterlogged: Surrendering the Physical Space

Response to Waterlog: Fables of the Saturation (Saturn’s Rings)

The Collection Lincoln.

Running from September 15 to December 16 2007, this group show featured new commissions by seven leading artists, all on the theme of the water drenched landscapes of the east of England.

In particular, the film, photography, sound and text works are inspired by the writings of WG Sebald in The Rings of Saturn. In the novel, the German-born writer describes a (fictional) walking tour in the East of England, where he lived for more than 20 years.

What follows is part review, part polemic written after viewing the show on Monday 24th September 2007.

Surrendering the Physical Space

Third area triumphalism: sponsored by Ace East Anglian Regeneration and Film and Video Umbrella + etc and so throw back to 1970’s and 80’s. – who makes ‘videos’ any more? Work that looks good on the internet or in theory but lacks depth in practice. Worst culprit Finlay and Guy Moreton = bad photos + bad concrete poetry = good art..so we are told….

More panning shots = film and ‘authenticity’ – landscape photos that make up in scale and printed ‘quality’ what they lack in composition – cf. Raymond Moore….no contest this is ‘illustration’ that all.

Spurious commentary, faux text art, limp ideas conceived as mediocrity piggybacking on other artists e.g. let’s throw a few references to Benjamin Brittan in. Indeed only the bell-ringing piece reveals any kind of purely aesthetic plausibility. Tacita Dean’s ‘art-umentary’ was unavailable but looks like more post Taylor-Woodisms…probably post Arena solipism. Leave it to the professionals. Two artists implicitly quote Michael Hamburger as subject – again hoping he will provide intellectual ‘ballast’ for shaky boats they are floating?

Is this the ‘High Water Mark’ we are seeing of a certain kind of modern irony (post -anti -recycled- ironicism at that). Concrete poetry, deadpan documentary – the assimilation of ‘museum collection’ pieces (Pope) which trade faux morbidity and memorial incompetance for genuine creativity. Pseudo-memory tricks and use of ‘real’ people on trips around Lincoln may set up nicely the next funding opportunity angle but says nothing about the actual area..historical skimming…internet knowledge substituted for depth and reality.

A landscape without a landscape…..

A quick check reveals that all the artists ‘involved’ in project have no real connection to the landscape..less in fact than Sebald himself…truly OUTSIDER ART…..playing to gallery and patronising to locality and locals.

The waterlogged Raft of The Medusa a la Gericault.

Compare with a ‘real’ memorials like the USAF bomber crew signatures on ceiling of the Eagle, Cambridge or Swan at Lavenham.

Sebald’s oblique desire to get at the ‘truth’ is acknowledged as being ‘unobtainable’.

These artworks are imitative, illustrational and sometimes simply non-sensical….but they act the part proffering a oblique sense of their own worth as ‘art objects’ no matter that their formation based on pilfering and quotation not inward depth.

When the physical nature of an art/i/fact is surrendered totally to intellectual ‘re-fabrication’ the fabric itself becomes immaterial (literally) – disolved and drowned in dissonance and (dis)illusion.

A fish viewed through water offers us a mangled image. These are waterlogged ideas…weighed down by their own conceits and leaving no room for trancendence or fulfillment.

We emerge exausted as if having clogged our way across a muddy field. Saturnation.

For a very pretty website which applauds itself throughout go to…

http://www.waterlog.fvu.co.uk/

’Squaring the Circle’ – from student to practitioner to facilitator:

Critical reflections on the delivery of fine art teaching as learner and practitioner.

Re-post – written 2004

2004 marks the 27th year from my enrolment on an Art and Design Foundation Course at Oxford Polytechnic (now Brookes University) and this essay will critically examine both my experience as a learner in various institutions in that period and a reflection on how the PGCCE delivery module and my current position as a teacher on a Foundation Art course at New College Nottingham are informed by these learner experiences. I have divided this timescale into three distinct periods for the sake of clarity. The first period from 1977 to 1981 details my learner experience at Oxford and subsequently on a Fine Art B.A. course at Hornsey College of Art (Middlesex Polytechnic now University). The second period 1994 -1996 details my activity as a practicing artist in Edinburgh Scotland whilst attending the Edinburgh University School for Continuing Education course in Scottish Cultural Studies. Thirdly is my present teaching experience before and during the PGCCE course. In all cases I am interested in the pedagogical theories and philosophies that have informed the delivery of teaching and will reflect on how this has wider social and cultural implications.

 A quarter of a century is a long time in teaching terms and I hope to show that there has been a sizable shift in the way teaching is conducted and a wider shift both in societal and governmental attitudes to the delivery of teaching. I may not square the circle any more successfully than Leonardo Da Vinci but hope to show that my own circular journey back to Foundation Art also mirrors a wider circular journey in pursuit of ‘good practice’ in teaching. Has the warning of Glynn Williams ( Royal College Professor of Sculpture) about the future of art education come true :-

Instead of the old national curriculum of thirty years ago we could soon have a national system of quality appraisal appearing to work smoothly, but once more incapable of attending to the individual expectations of the student’s creative work in relationship to the current reality of their subject.(Hetherington,1994,p.27)

or have we entered a golden age of ‘creativity’ in education as promised by the DFEE report ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture & Education’ (1999) which raised ‘creativity’ in teaching methods to almost mantra status. Has that ‘creativity’ flowed through to present day students and teachers? This essay examines the ‘outcomes’.

Pupil – Student
My abiding memory of school art teaching was of a strictly timetabled and pedagogic manner. Teachers were strictly referred to as ‘Sir’ in my Grammar turned Comprehensive school. The art teaching was generally under-resourced and relied on a great deal of setting of ‘titles’ or projects which were then worked to. There was little group work although pupils did sit around tables and homework was set in a similar way. Art within the school environment was regarded as a ‘lesser’ subject as the overall ethos was that of a watered down public school. Coming from a working-class background it was thought slightly odd to even pursue art as a career and it was only the intervention of more enlightened teachers at 16 plus which overcame familial concern and allowed my continuing to a foundation course. The scenario was probably common at this time and reflected wider concerns for upward social mobility and a lack of understanding of exactly what ‘art’ was for. The teachers were generally good but there was little reflection on teaching methods and a high turnover of staff who ‘rebelled’ against the old-fashioned grammar school regime. Having gained entry to Oxford Polytechnic I was immediately thrown into a more adventurous teaching environment where variety, experimentation and artistic theory were delivered in a fairly structured way. The curriculum was based on a Bauhaus model from Weimar Germany and stressed avant-garde solutions alongside staples such as observational drawing. However none of the teaching radically departed from the current pedagogical fashions. All coursework was to be assessed by course tutors and there was no substantial group delivery or one-to-one tutorial set-up.. On the plus side a lot of the part-time tutors were radical art practitioners in their own right.
One-to-one teaching also prevailed in the B.A. tutoring at Hornsey College of Art (1978-1981). Again the model was influenced by Bauhaus although a more ‘hands-off’ attitude prevailed and self-directed and experiential methods were used extensively. Alongside this art history was delivered in a lecture style. Individual tutorials were the major point of contact between teacher and student. Once again this was a common teaching style in art schools at this period. This maps closely to Williams’ analysis of the progress of art teaching as outlined in 1994. The old Diploma courses had metamorphosed into polytechnic degree courses and slowly the haphazard regime of part time tutors was replaced by a more structured and accountable system of teaching. What was lost was the student/practitioner contact that was one of the more important benefits of this period of teaching. During the late 1960’s, 1970’s UK art schools were amongst the best in the world both in terms of resourcing and the quality of practitioner engagement. By 1978 this was starting to change as the cold winds of Thatcherism blew through the academic world. I fell foul of this political change personally as a grant to attend the Royal College M.A. in 1981 was siphoned off to provide scholarships for ‘working-class’ achievers to attend public schools….ironically. At the same time the early buds of ‘post-modernism’ were shooting up in the art colleges and older traditional (and expensive) methods such as printmaking and life-drawing were losing their place in the art school curriculum to ‘new’ media and fashions. Ironically it was at the point of greatest right-wing ideological intervention in the creative arts that the more extreme left wing radical teaching strategies gained their foothold in the art colleges. In a pre-internet age computer art, video, installation and performance were all making inroads especially as this seemed to mirror ‘important’ transatlantic developments in the arts and ‘provincial’ UK could not be left behind in the race for international avant-garde status.

Practitioner – Learner
Skipping ten years and 1993 saw me in a very different situation from the ‘ivory tower’ of art college. Whilst not claiming to be self-sufficient as an artist I could claim to be a ‘practitioner’ although practitioner/teacher appointments were not forthcoming. I had briefly taught creative writing and illustration at evening class level but whilst in Edinburgh for two years my educational experiences were firmly in the learner field. Without excessive detail these two years on a Continuing Education course in Scottish Cultural Studies introduced me to some very conservative teaching styles and some very radical wider cultural theorising. The delivery of lessons with exception of some folk music was exclusively pedagogic and strictly conservative with a great deal of lecturing and detailed handouts being provided. However the information contained therein was radically orientated to a notion of Scottish independence and introduced me to the generalist philosophy of Patrick Geddes and in turn his influence on Lewis Mumford and the development of the arts in Scotland. This may seem irrelevant to art teaching delivery but at the same time (published 1989) Peter Abbs brought Herbert Read, Lewis Mumford and D.W. Winnacott’s theories to bear on his ‘A is for Aesthetic’ book where he gave an impassioned plea for a reversal of ‘technicist’ trends in art teaching. This was bolstered by the late art critic Peter Fuller who gave a highly rational argument for a change in the way art and art schools in the U.K. were heading. This also coincided with the Glynn Williams article on ‘the practitioner’ which I referenced earlier. The argument contended that ’specialism’ rather than ‘generalism’ was the over-riding principle in art teaching and that students were being denied the spiritual and traditional areas of teaching in pursuit of a new glossy trans-avant-garde fashionability. There was also a ‘localist’ agenda wrapped up in this argument as the contemporary (metropolitan) art scene extinguished the ‘provincial’ and this was felt keenly in Scotland around the generalist table.

Within a few years the ‘fashionistas’ had won as through intense lobbying, metropolitan art school conformity and the arrival of large dollops of Thatcherite loot ( e.g. The Satchi Collection) the UK art world was reinvigorated or destroyed depending on your point of view. Most importantly however you view the ‘Brit Art’ phenomena fine artists had become the new pop stars and the repercussions of that are still being felt in educational terms. Recently the electrical engineering department at Trent University Nottingham was slimmed down due to lack of applicants and its computers switched to the over-subscribed web/ digital arts and design course….a reflection of the current popularity of arts courses. This trend can be directly attributed to the much higher profile that artists such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst enjoy in the popular media. The shark was everywhere in more than one sense.

Practitioner – Facilitator?
..universities and institutions of higher learning are called upon to create skills and no longer ideals – so many doctors, so many teachers in a given discipline, so many administrators etc.
(Lyotard, Jean-Francois from The Postmodern Condition quoted in Bentley,D.M.R, 2000)
So where is art teaching after nearly thirty years and how have these changes and teacher training influenced my teaching practice? In an era of drive-thru web delivered degrees and mass media overkill what are the definitions of good practice and can one teach art at all? My present teaching practice incorporates one morning a week at New College Nottingham Foundation Art Course so in some respects I have come full circle. For an analysis of this present teaching I have drawn heavily on David Jones and his work for Nottingham University Department of Continuing Education. Jones a fine artist by training ( Leeds Art College) has theorised and published on the question of fine art teaching and creativity in some depth. In particular I am drawn to his

analysis of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs as expressed in his pamphlet entitled ‘Creativity’ (Jones,D.1984).
Here he describes Maslow’s three stages of creativity…

.primary creativity is….concerned with the generation of symbolic images, with myth,with legend,ritual and phantasy.
It is concerned with content rather than form, with metaphor rather than structure.

..secondary creativity …concerned more with structure….designing rather than dreaming.

a synthesis of these two forms of functioning’…is the third form..
‘integrated creativity’
This not only applies to art teaching but when correlated with John Cowan’s version of Kolb’s learning cycle (Hetherington,1994,p.29 – see below) can be seen to map closely with the experiential way art students actually learn. If the past experience, exploring and consolidating fields are aligned with the above categories we are some way to understanding the processes that affect individual learning.

In Cowan the model assumes that tutor/student contact occurs at points on the loop where the tutor is asking questions, provoking, hearing responses before the next ’surge’ of learning. It is compared to a plane looping the loop. This accords with my own feelings of the relationships I have established with fine art students. It is a dual process of mutual learning that depends on mutual respect and an attempt to guide rather than ‘lecture’ the student into a new phase of learning. New College assessment requires students to peer review each other’s work and this definitely brings out a mature response. On the down side there is a ‘flattening out’ of critical responses too. In some ways peer reviewing also allows ‘firm’ judgements to be avoided
in an area where ‘absolute’ values are dangerous and opinion can be confused with taste. However if we are no longer judging technique or ability only ‘creative process’ are we in fact judging artistic ‘content’ at all. The most notable aspect of the New College curriculum is the open-ended nature of both assessment and curriculum planning. Students are ‘introduced’ to materials and ’self-initiated’ project work. Inclusivity and mutual respect are prioritised and atmosphere friendly but nowhere did I feel that rigorous criticality was to be encouraged. This is not just a problem on the small scale. Modern teaching and artistic movements overlap to a degree where a recent exhibition at the Serpentine ( ironically titled ‘State of Play’) stated boldly..
art can no longer be defined through a single dominant movement or school of thought
(Serpentine catalogue of exhibition sponsored by Hugo Boss, 2004)

Faced with this kind of statement it is small wonder the art tutor feels unable to make bold statements in a teaching context. It is my firm belief that this ‘process’ is what Abbs and Fuller warned about that in a world of all opinions being equal nobody can actually apply standards. It is my intention to teach fairly but with a strong emphasis that art history and notions of taste do involve choices. This is at odds with some of current teaching practice in this area but as Jones himself states…
If we are to help adults to become involved in creative activity we cannot ignore the difficulties, the anxieties and the internal struggles which form an essential part of the process.
(Jones, 1984, p.18)

In the move from ‘teacher’ to ‘facilitator’ I believe we may have thrown out the baby with the bath water. In the process of assessing fine artists we really have three options according to Jones. 1) Finished work 2) Watching students work and 3)Talking to students. In this sequence the second and third options are vital if we are really to engage with their ‘creativity’. I fully endorse Jones’s take on Knowles of referring to a climate of ‘mutual enquiry’. It is in individual tuition that the strength of UK art teaching once lay especially if that teacher was a practitioner. The process of moving to ’sessional lecturers’ , project and ’self-directed’ working strategies and the ‘homogenisation’ of criticism have lead to a fine art sector that obeys all the whims and criteria of management but few of the truly creative demands of students. Efficient throughput of these ‘units’ in a growing market causes smiles in the accounts department but are we delivering the best and ‘creative’ education we can. As I look back over nearly thirty years I see many good aspects of art teaching that have been lost and although both teachers and students are more information ‘rich’ they seem creatively poorer. Time is one category that can no longer be easily provided…one to one tutorials cost money. Yet in those moments of reciprocal learning and reflection in the 60’s and 70’s were planted the seeds of some of the best artists of the past thirty years. Those connections have been severed and will not be easily replaced however prudent the college finances. Finally a practitioner on art paraphrased by painter/teacher David Ainley at a conference on Lifelong Learning and the Arts in 2001…
….if a teacher is any good he or she learns as much as the students…the ‘answers’ if there any, are formed by all the participants in the conversation within the context of their own lives (Kosuth,J. Ten Points for an Art Academy, 1999)

References

Abbs, P (1989) A is for Aesthetic: Essays on Creative and Aesthetic Education. Lewes, Falmer.

Cowan,J (1994) ‘How can students of art and design best be helped to learn and develop?’ in Hetherington, P Artists in the 1990’s: Their Education and Values: Issues in Art and Education Volume 1: Papers submitted at conference held at the Tate Gallery in 1991 and 1992, organized by the Wimbledon School of Art in collaboration with the Tate Gallery. Wimbledon, London.

Farthing, S (2000) An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Modern Art. London, Duckworth.

Ainley, D (2001) ‘Structure, Space and Clutching Water in the Art Education of Adults.’in Jones, D.J. and Normie, G ed. 2001-A Spatial Odyssey: Papers from the 6th International Conference on Lifelong Learning and the Arts. Nottingham, Continuing Education Press, School of Continuing Education, University of Nottingham.

Jones, D.J (1984) Creativity : Adults: Psychological and Educational Perspectives 8. Nottingham, University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education.

Jones, D.J and Chadwick, A.F ed. (1981) Adult Education and The Arts: Nottingham Working Papers in the Education of Adults 2. Nottingham, University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education.

Williams, G (1994) ‘The practitioner, once a ubiquitous presence in art and design education, is now a rarity: A history of the blooming and decline of the species.’ in Hetherington, P Artists in the 1990’s: Their Education and Values: Issues in Art and Education Volume 1: Papers submitted at conference held at the Tate Gallery in 1991 and 1992, organized by the Wimbledon School of Art in collaboration with the Tate Gallery. Wimbledon, London.

Department for Education and Employment.(1999) All our futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. Sudbury, DfEE Publications.

Internet Sources
Bentley, D.M.R
1999
“Art for Arts’ Sake; or, Humanities for Humanity’s Sake. A Discussion Paper.”
Canadian Poetry
[online]
University of Western Ontario, Canada
Available at: http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/artsnew.htm
[Accessed 17.02.2004]

Jones, D.J
1999
“Different Theatres, Different Audiences: The Arts and the Education of Adults.”
British Education Conference Programmes
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 29th Annual Conference, 5-7 July 1999, University of Warwick.
[online]
University of Nottingham. United Kingdom.
Available at : http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000001002.doc
[Accessed 17.02.2004]

The Turner Prize