Wot is modern Art?

Wot is modern art?

Arguably the first act of Modern Art, or ‘getting away with murder’, was committed circa 1840 by William Mallard ‘Slasher’ Turner (details are hazy, like much of Slashers’ work) but Modern Art has been going on ever since.

As first most acts of Modern Art were fairly innocuous and some were even good – put your hands together for the ‘Impressionists’. But things got ugly in the 1920’s when a international gang calling themselves the ‘Dadaists’ started hitting galleries throughout Europe. Perhaps the most infamous act of Modern Art ever, was committed by the leader of the ‘Dada’ gang Marcel ‘Pisser’ Duchamp, in a small Parisian gallery.  Heavily disguised and going under an alias, ‘Pisser’ Duchamp exploded a urinal in the Art World and threatened to do big jobs if his demands weren’t meet.

Now you may ask why the Art World didn’t just ignore him, and it’s a good question. If no one took any notice, he’d have soon got bored and gone back to knicking ladies handbags and scrawling rude crude drawings in pissoirs.  But that’s not what happened.  Instead of telling ‘Pisser’ not to grow up and kicking him and his urinal out of the gallery, the Art World sucumbed to his threats and submitted to his demands; eventually giving ‘Pisser’ all the attention and money he so desparately craved.

‘Never negotiate with terrorists’ is the first rule of callous, power crazed governments the world over. This is only resonable as extortion is their job and they don’t want petty amateurs muscling in.  If only the Art World had taken such a tough line with ‘Pisser’ Duchamp, millions of gulible Art buyers might still have their money.  Flushed by Pisser’s success other, copy-cat Dadaists, relieved themselves in galleries all over the world with a stream of easy to come by ‘Readymades’.  And by so doing, they took the piss out of Modern Art.

By the 1990’s the Dadaist’s seventy year reign of sewage was still going strong.  Any blockage of Modern Art had been ‘Drain-O-ed’ long ago and the Art World was so used to the stench, that anything that could be, would be, sneaked passed security and into an Art gallery: bricks, vacuum cleaners, dog turds, pipes (cunningly labled ‘not a pipe’) sheep, sharks, blank canvases – even whole houses!

Dadaist gangs tried to out-outrage each other’s ‘Readymade’ atrocities. The turf war between two East London Dadaist gangs ‘The Emiens’ and ‘The Hursts’, being especially bloody. The vicious Hurst gang finally winning with a Readymade of montorous gall entitled ‘Two-Half-Sheep-in–Pickledcow-with Rotten Parrot-Head-handsewn-on-Buttocks’. This notorious Art Crime Caper hit both rich and poor art buyers alike, and summed up the Hurst’s – and the Dadaist’s – attitude to buyers: ‘not only can you not afford it, but you can’t hang it over your mantelpiece if you could’.

It seemed no where and no thing was safe. The more the Art World failed to tackle the problem, the higher the Dadaist’s demands for money and attention became – eventually Dadaist gangs even demanded to be taken seriously.

So the answer to the question ‘Wot is Modern Art’ is: any old tat that anybody will pay enough attention to, and take seriously enough – to pay money for.  Which makes eBay the world’s largest art gallery.

As a postscript I must confess that I too once subcumed to pressure and produced a Readymade ( I was young, I needed the money, and everyone else was doing it).  Sadly, my ‘Rabbit Cow-with Pidgeon Feet-Knicking-Fish-from Chip Pan’ just didn’t have what it took, to get taken seriously.

www.maxschindler.com

What is abstract art ?

Good question! WHAT is it????!

Firstly, unlike a Dadaist ‘Readymade’, which isn’t made by the artist but you can tell what it is; Abstract art is made by the artist, but you can’t tell what it is… apart from perhaps a mess.

For example the Famous Dadaist artist’s Jeff Koon’s Readymade ‘Vacuum Cleaner’ (above) was not made by the Famous artist Jeff Koon’s, but you can tell it’s a vac. We could, I suppose, credit James Dyson as being the artist, if it was a Dyson… or possibly J. Edgar Hoover if it was a Hoover- either way it is undoubtedly a vac.

(actually, I couldn’t afford to show you a picture of the Famous Dadaistic artist Jeff Koon’s ‘Vaccum Cleaner 47’, so I picked this one up at Argos, but I think you get the point.

Whereas (below) the Famous Abstract artist John Hoyland’s ‘Homage to Constable’ is made by the Famous Abstractional artist John Hoyland but… can you tell it’s a ‘Homage to Constable’ ?!!? Me neither.

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Famous Abstract artist John Hoyland’s ‘Homage to Constable’ Portrait of ‘Mrs Somebody or Other’ by John Constable

(actually, I couldn’t afford to show you a picture of Famous Abstractist artist John Hoyland’s ‘Homage to Constable’, so I got a cat to paint this one instead (no really). [if all this angling for a bigger budget you’re wasting your time. Ed]

Admittedly, John Constable is better known for his landscapes and Famous Abstractist artist John Hoyland’s ‘Homage to Constable’ hopefully, alludes to those. So to be fair, here are the real things:

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As you can see, all becomes clear. The green smudge is the land, the orange smudge the sky and the yellow smudges the clouds. Or possibly the other way around.     Anyway, a load of hommage if ever I saw one.  By the by, Famous Abstractical Artist John Hoyland’s is also famous for his famous ‘economy of paint’, notice how he economically, and famously, doesn’t paint right up to the edges. Every little helps John, every little helps.

But I digress.

Secondly, Abstractionalism , as we in the art world call it, must be BIG. Let’s face it, when you’re literally throwing paint at a canvas it helps if you have a BIG canvas – paint that misses is a bugger to get out of the carpet no matter which vac you use! Plus, when you’re charging a pile of money for old rope it helps if there’s a big pile of old rope; ideally there should be enough for the artist to hang themself. Incidentally artist hanging themselves was done in the 60’s and 70’s; it was called ‘Performance Artism’, not because it went quicker ( a REALLY Famous Abstract-o-nauts, such as Jackson Pollock, could dribble out 4 or 5 paintings in the time it took a MERELY Famous Performancealistic artist to hang himself even once) but because everyone clapped when it was all over.

But I digress.

Below we see a real Famous Abstraction artist! John Hoyland, hard at work posing in his studio. (Whoops, you won’t be getting that rug clean in a hurry John!) It’s clearly the start of John’s busy day throwing paint around, how can we tell? Elementary, he hasn’t go a splat on him!

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The picture give a clue to another way John cleverly achieves his famous ‘economy of paint’ can you spot it?   YES! he buys cheap paint! [HELLO… have you bought a tin of Dulux recently. Ed] How much do you charge for these things again John? He even uses the tins to hold up the canvas thus saving the cost of an easel! I suspect that John is so famously economical that he flogs the carpet as ‘Axminster 8.10.78’. In fact the only paint John really wastes is that which hits the canvas, and from the state of his living room, that looks like an economically small amount.

A lesson to us all John, a lesson to us all.

But I digress.

From the 50’s to the 70’s abstract art cleaned up. [Which brand of vacuum cleaner did they use? Ha Ha. Ed.] The second world war was over, America had won, rock and roll was on the wireless television and old brown painting was out – new bright splodges was in. Abstract Artism was symbolic of the new world order: crude, antisocial, wasteful, elitist and heavily militarised. Whether there is any truth in the rumour that some American Abstractist artists were funded by the C.I.A. for their propaganda value in the ideology war against Russia… is something I have sworn never to reveal. Enigmatic, provocative and pretentiously titled works such as: ‘Full Fathom Five, Number 32’, ‘Hating And Dreaming’, ‘Endless Poem’, ‘My God How Do I Get Away With This Nonsense, Number 57’ and ’Do I Look Bothered’, were described by contemporary critics as ‘terribly modern acts of painting’ that ‘placed maximum pressure against conscious design’, ‘broke the barriers of seeing to revolutionise art’ and ‘dragged the art world kicking and screaming into a brave new, modern era’.

Or rather that’s what Abstractist artists, dealers and their critic sympathisers would have us believe. Actually, all that had been done at the end of the previous century by cubism and fauvism, or half a century before that if you count J.M. ‘Slasher’ Turner. Abstractionism was just more of the same, but BIGGER and BADDER.  And by the by, the art world has never needed dragging; it is ever on the lookout for band wagons to jump on and it leapt onto Abstractionstism’s with the all alacrity of an avaricious arms dealer spotting a cut-price B2 stealth bomber.

But I digress.

All this isn’t to say that some Abstractionist art isn’t nice. It is, some of it is very pretty, in the same way that a crumbling brick wall can be very pretty or an old door with peeling paint or a patch of mossy tree bark.  All lovely compositions of colour and texture… and completely random. If you like Abstractionist art here’s a money saving tip: Do It Yourself. These days with modern camera and print technology anyone can snap an oily puddle and have it up on their wall as a 8×8 foot ‘canvas’ quicker than you can say ‘Neo-Conceptualist Dadao-Abstract Construct’. It’ll look fab behind your Phillip Starck sofa and it’ll cost a fraction of a real piece of Abstractist art.

Not good enough? Want genuine paint on genuine canvas? No problem. Below is a genuine MASTERPIECE by the VERY Famous Abstractionalistic artist Mark Rothko. ANYBODY can paint that. ANYBODY.  And remember, Abstractist art is meant to be fun… Ha.

Above: Mark Rothko’s ‘Two Coats of Dulux Barely Black – Number 17’ 1964.

Lastly, and most importantly, Abstractionistic Artalism hasn’t gone away; it’s still out there and it’s still selling… so be careful, and the next time someone offers you a blank canvas for the knock-down bargain price of £1,750,000 THINK – is it really worth it?

www.maxschindler.com

Will modern art go on forever?

Yes it does seem like that sometimes doesn’t it! But the good news is that no it won’t, nothing is infinite. Contrary to the ‘proofs’ offered by the French mathematician Georg Cantor, ever thing has at least two ends and a middle in between. We are current somewhere in modern art’s middle, we’ve past its front end and I confidently predict that we can look forward to seeing its rear end very soon. Modern art has already lost its dominance of private galleries is on the ropes in the auction rooms and is a dead man walking in the institutional galleries. These last bastions will fall to the forces of ‘proper art’ once the incumbent generation of institutionalised curators either die off, or are killed off by hoards of angry art lovers demanding they spend public money buying the art the public itself would spend its money on buying if only they had a lot more money to spend.

Now you may say this is all nonsense [and having read through it I would be tempted to agree with them. Ed.], that the Tate Modern (spit) is the most visited museum in the whole of London and possible the world, that it is has over 700 floors all stuffed to the gills with modern art of the very worst kind and that doesn’t seem to be putting people off going. Well all this is may be true [not sure about the 700 floors. Ed.]. But we must remember that: the Bedlam lunatic asylum, just a short walk down the road from the Tate Modern and which for the small fee of six pence, would admit visitors to see the antics of its inmates… is closed. However, were it to reopen for business I suspect it would draw most of the crowd from the Tate Modern (spit), providing of course, that it dropped its prices.

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The Tate Modern (spit) is NOT an art gallery, it is a free freak show. People take the kids on a Sunday afternoon to have their photo taken next to the latest oversized offering in the turbine hall, to gasp in amazement at the swirling smudges of gaudily coloured paint that looks like something their cat could do, to stare in bafflement at the blank canvases and gasp in admiration at the sheer bloody cheek of the installations. All with the misguided illusion that they’ve ‘had a bit of culture’ and warm glow which comes from it only having cost them whatever was they really couldn’t dissuaded the kids from buying in the gift shop plus the price of a stiff gin or two to calm granddad’s blood pressure.

Over the past century proper art has been trivialised as light-weight, ‘mere’ representation, unworthy of the attention of serious (i.e. rich) collectors or important (i.e. selling) artists or clever (i.e. unintelligible.) critics. But with proper artists like Jack Vetriano getting top dollar at auction, opinions are changing. I hasten to add, that the art worlds wheelers and dealers have not had a ‘change of heart’ (they have none) and have not ‘seen of the light’ (they are blind), indeed they would spend all day singing the praises of pile of filthy bed sheets if they thought they could flog it for 150,000 quid… and they have. Their opinion simply follows the money and the money is starting to flow towards proper art. Jack Vettriano may, or may not, be the world’s greatest proper painter but at least the debate can be about subject, colour, brushwork, draftsmanship and composition; and not whether ‘the thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles’ or such similar bollocks.

So all in all the future is bright, the future is not orange with a lilac dribble in one corner that looks a bit like a drowned rat if you screw your eyes up. The only infinite aspect of modern art is the infinite amount of bollocks that will continue to be talked about it by critics, curators and artists; that really does have no end.

www.maxschindler.com

What is it with size?

Cracks, bricks and spiders, what do they all have in common? They are all enormous in the Alice in Wonderland world of modern art.

None of the above recent offerings of the Tate Modern, shrunk it to its normal size, would be able to command the respect, gravitas and price tag commensurate with an ‘important’ artist’s work. If fact the mathematical formulae for calculating an artwork’s importance (as any curator worth his Rolex will tell you) is: D²=$³, where ‘d’ is dimensions. Which prestigious gallery or fat-wallet art buyer is going to fork out £250,000 for a 2 inch spider or 30cm crack?… even if it is badly made and unconvincing. They’re not stupid; they know real art is BIG.

The fact is that size does matter and for the vast majority of recent art offerings the only quality that impresses is quantity. Would the dreadful ‘make-your-own wooden-dinosaur-in-16-easy-to-cut-out-pieces Angel of the North’ have got moor space if it had only take up one sod rather than four fields? And how much would Gormely have dared to overcharge for it if it had, eh?

My sincere apologies to the manufacturers of the fine wooden dinosaur shown, no slur was intended by comparing your product to Gormely’s but try as I might I really couldn’t find anything quiet as lumpen, crude, inelegant and generally ‘un-angel like’ as Gormely’s ‘Eyesaur of the North’.

P.S. I notice your dinosaur sell for just £9.99, you should think bigger.

Why Picasso is crap

Many people say ‘I may not know much about art but I know what I like’. Such people tend not to like Picasso. I say ‘I know a lot about art and I know what I like… and I don’t like Picasso’. To be fair it’s not just Picasso who I dislike; he’s simply the most famous of a whole raft of artists who’ve conned the gullible.

That ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ cannot be argued against, and that art ‘buyers pays their money and takes their choice’ is on an equally firm footing. The sad thing is that beauty is not a consideration for many art buyers. The international art market is a futures market: they’d buy a brick if they thought they could sell it for more tomorrow than they bought it for today (Carl Andre staggers to mind under his enormous pile of bricks which were taken of his hands by the Tate gallery in London, much to his relieve no doubt). So let’s not worry about the ‘art’ market, it’s not going to go away as long as people are still making money and I suspect few in it kid themselves it’s about art… though they may kid others.

Which brings me back to Picasso. Picasso, a by-word for great art, lauded as the greatest artist of the last century. Well I’m no Picasso, so let me try and show you his art without the rose tinted hype surrounding it.

Perhaps Picasso’s most acclaimed (certainly written about) painting is ‘Guernica’, it’s subject is war. It is simply bad. A large sprawling cat’s cradle of various parts of cartoon characters painted with all the control, grace, subtlety and flair of a eight year old scrawling a dirty picture on a classroom chalk board. And yet this painting is considered his finest work, a powerful condemnation of war said to have reduced people who’ve seen it to tears. Why? Because it’s a Picasso, those people have paid 15€ to see the greatest painting of the 20th centenary and that’s what they see. Shrink it to A3 and stick it up on the wall of their kid’s school and no one would look at it twice.

Now before you think this rant (er, it’s a BLOG, Ed.) is all about rubbishing other, more successful painters(er, I thought that’s exactly what we’re about, Ed.) let me show you another painting. Far less well know than Guernica but far more deserving of  acclaim. Its subject is war, the same as Guernica’s, but in its execution it is ever thing Guernica is not. Shrunken to any size and stuck anywhere this painting draws attention and speaks for itself, it is John Sargent’s ‘Gassed’.

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