Eight Fallacies About Contemporary Art
by Paddy Johnson
This work generated so much discussion, it must be good!
Everybody talks about Lindsay Lohan, but this doesn’t lead people to conclude she is an excellent actor. The same rationale needs to be applied to art. Media starlets Damien Hirst, Banksy and Vanessa Beecroft generate media spectacle around their personality and art designed to elicit base response. Unfortunately, it works. None of them however, have made anything in recent memory worth the chatter their work produces.
Anything can be art!
Duchamp didn’t make every shovel art, just the one he labeled. In other words, while context and intentionality can earn a work the title of “art,” residual creative impulse does not.
Value is completely subjective.
No it’s not. There are methods of evaluating art, and just because viewers respond differently doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Unresolved aesthetic choices and lazy conceptual practice won’t receive a pass from me.
Anyone could do that.
A sentiment typically refuted with the argument, “But you didn’t.” A more common version of the myth circulating art circles, “It’s too easy” completes itself with “to take a compelling photograph,” or “to make a good collage.” In each case, the viewer’s actually complaining that it’s too hard to separate the good from the bad. There’s no easy answer to this dilemma, except to look at enough art to develop a mature eye.
Elitism rules the art world.
Actually, this one is true, but the unspoken fallacy here, is that it doesn’t also rule every other field. Class is far less permeable than we care to believe.
Pioneering artists are “ahead of their time.”
The idea that the art world understands something regular folk do not is patently false. Artists don’t have any special vision into the future; a few talented individuals will simply earn the unique burden of representing a strand of visual culture for the generation. I don’t believe in the concept of genius.
I don’t know enough about art to talk about it.
Anyone can discuss art well, few of us however look at it long enough to be able to do so. Trust your instincts, talk about what you see — don’t be afraid to be wrong. The beauty of an opinion is that you can change it as your response evolves.
Art professionals wear black.
Unless they wear pink.
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Nice list. I think I agree about the elitism one, but I'd like to the see idea flushed out more. Perhaps it warrants its own post?
It's funny you mention that as the subject came up independently in a twitter debate yesterday.
Everyone one of these deserves it's own post.
Expect maybe the one about wearing black.
It is now my mission to ensure that every poor misguided would be critic of the art world sees this post. I may print it out and start leafleting gallery openings with it.
Thank you.
Everybody talks about Lindsay Lohan because of her outlandish behavior which is a completely different concept than her acting. Perhaps we're not reading the same media outlets, but I always see Damien Hirst, Banksey and Vanessa Beecroft mentioned in the context of their work, not their behavior. I'm not arguing that this inherently makes them "good" artists, but rather the fact that we as a culture choose to discuss them so thoroughly in turn reveals insights about our collective value systems. The fact that the work of these artists in particular woo us so makes them objects that pull back our own masks and reveal us for who we are. I think Hirst's "For the Love of God" was the most repulsive thing I've seen in a long time, but I can't deny the effect it had on our culture. From an artistic standpoint, I find that fascinating.
I think that the most important heading didn't even make it to this list, but was mentioned only in Johnson's blog introduction to this article : "I can get a sense of the work by viewing it online", which should be expanded to say "I can get a sense of the work by viewing it through any reproducible medium (or something to that effect)". I think this is most important because this is how 99% (guestimate!) of the world comes in contact with contemporary art, and therefore draws their conclusions and misunderstandings from an experience severed from actual contact with the art within a space. They do not know that a difference exists, or at least that the difference is important, and this is something I feel should be emphasized far above all else within this subject.
Also, "Zummbot" makes a very important point that I second. Too often the (acknowledged) elitism and a reverence for the obscure (to those outside of the art-world, at least) overpowers those within the art community to discount (sometimes fairly, of course) popular art and popular artists. This rejection comes without a stringent consideration as to why this art is popular in the first place, why it has won the ire or devotion of those beyond the "art world".
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