Link
to Part 2 : The Role of the Ethical Dimension in Arts Practice
An Account of Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary
Art Practice
A critique in three parts of the Britpack phenomenon and
particularly the critical reception of Bank, Sarah Lucas and Sam
Taylor-Wood
Follow the links at the end of each page
This work is a consideration of the role of ethics in contemporary arts practice from Britain. It has its origins in the investigation of art work that I respond to passionately, and attempts to unpick the basis for this response. As the critical thinking on my own work develops, it has become essential to see debates around art and aesthetics in a political and ethical context.
This work began with my feeling of alienation from some of the currently fashionable work including many of the group described as 'young British artists' ('yBa'). Many claims have been made for this work and I want to look at some of these claims as they appear in the accompanying interviews and articles, catalogues and critical writings. Many of these artists seem to me to employ a ruthless assimiliation of the commercial and the kitsch in a way that is empty of imaginative space or invitation to the viewer. Recent shows in London like "Minky Manky" (1995), "Some Went Mad And Some Ran Away", "Take Me I'm Yours" include many artists working in this way. This piece focuses on the work of two women artists, Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor Wood, whose careers are booming within the framework of "yBa" and whose work has received attention but limited analysis. There are, of course many male artists using similar languages of irony and detachment, the work of "Bank" artists group is briefly discussed within this piece, a group of 3 men and one woman.
"Minky Manky," a show at the South London Art Gallery in
April/May 1995 curated by Carl Freedman, included Gilbert and George and
Sarah Lucas amongst many others. Freedman wrote that of one of the themes
of the exhibition was :
".. the artist as a subject, and (to) explore the relationship
between the art on the wall and its creator, to make the whole thing more
humanistic. And in there somewhere there is the beginnings of a thesis on
the relationship and similarities between madness and modernism, for
example, defiance of authority, nihilism, examples of extreme relativism,
strange transformations of the self, irrationality, and things like that."
Given this agenda, it is then surprising to find the work of Gilbert and
George represented with their repeated belief that :
"We don't believe that everyone is an artist because we do believe
that the artist has to be a total outsider, totally extreme, if not it
doesn't work and you are a boring normal person like everyone else.
Artists have to be outside to feel the world in a different way."
Later in the same interview with the curator Carl Freedman they talk
about their "horrible, horrible shock" on seeing a young male
friend who "could hardly walk, his hands were like skeletons. The
boy's had it...your friends completely dying in front of you, becoming
like skeletons." What comes through is Gilbert and George's complete
inadequacy to deal with the issues of pain, mortality, suffering and grief
that AIDS has introduced to their lives with anything approaching
emotional comprehension. Humanism is not the philosophical framework that
springs immediately to mind in considering their work or writings.
The recent "Brilliant" show (1996) at the Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis, U.S.A., is another example of an exhibition of young British
artists, perceived in even critical publicity and press coverage, as
promoting an idea of the dangerous avant-garde while actually remaining
unchallenging of the establishment. Neville Wakefield, writing in the
tabloid- newspaper style catalogue for "Brilliant" claims an art
history heritage for this work that includes Pop art and punk and says
"For these young artists , parodic indifference and irony - the
creative tools that once returned every gesture to an empty place on the
deconstructive stage- have become less a question of practice than the
underwriting of a sensibility ... Cultural pessimism has been transformed
into conceptual energy, boredom into the impetus for action and
provocation. The current generation is dismissive of the ideologically
rigorous but aesthetically anaemic art leavened throughout the 1980's on
the imported yeast of post-structuralism and the essentially foreign
theory enlisted for its legitimisation." (my emphasis)
The supposedly anti-intellectual and in fact, positively political
position that this occupies will be discussed later in this piece. Central
to this discussion is my investigation of the sensibility and as an
extension of this, the ethical position that is assumed in this work.
Implicit in my understanding of an ethical practice is the idea that
engaging with the work extends the viewers imagination and ability to
imagine change, rather than a self-reflexive nihilism . While some of the
artists in "Brilliant" use materials and methods that embrace
sensuality and lived experience (Anya Gallaccio , Tracey Emin) in a way
that I see as being central to our experience as viewers and our
involvement in the work, the choices made by other artists, including
Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor Wood, leave us as passive observers . In the
accompanying interview in "Brilliant" Sarah Lucas makes it clear
that she is not making work of social or political or critical meaning,
she says:
"Just look at the picture and think what you like. I knew that
everybody would have a response to to these pictures , whether they
thought I was being gratuitous or whether they thought I was making a
feminist point or whether they thought I was actually just carrying on the
exploitation. "
So we seem to have returned to the old, tired familiar notion of artist
as moral relativist, removed from the rest of the world, at liberty to
make and say and do without the necessity for explanation or intellectual
framework. This role does have social-political implications, and however
weary these graduates of Goldsmiths may be, many others are passionately
involved in these post structuralist debates. To choose not to join the
messy debates over the language of experience, the themes of difference
and otherness is to adopt a political and intellectual position. The
narcissistic self-referential, free-enterprise nature of the work to the
exclusion of any other outside factors ultimately locates the work as
politically right wing. It is worth pointing out here that the peers to
these artists in theatre, writers like Ayub Khan-Din ("East is East"
Royal Court Theatre,London 1996) Shelagh Stephenson ("Memory of Water"
Gate Theatre,London 1996) show no such reluctance to engage with the mess
of social and political positioning. Michael Billington writes:
"The rising generation, who in Britain have all grown up under
Conservative rule, see through the hypocrisy of appeals to family values
and reject the notion that self matters more than society....their themes
have included the Holocaust, Irish Republicanism , East End Fascism ,
unionism and miscegenation. .. the corruption and exhaustion of the times
has bred a countervailing moral revulsion."
It seems that it is not an inevitable result of 18 years of Tory rule
that artists become individualistic and self-referentially ironic.
It is worth noticing here that the phrase "young British artists "
or the label "Britpack" has been used as a commercial marketing
strategy to unite artists who are different in formal style but largely
share, I shall argue, a common theoretical position. The full extent of
the incorporation of these 'bad girls'/ 'bad boys' into the establishment
is evident in that radical letter from the edge, Harpers and Queen
where Martin Gayford promotes their work in the London artfair Art97;
"The yBa's are ironic, super-cool, disengaged and
disenchanted...there are some labels one might try to apply: Nihilism with
attitude, grungism, dysfunctional" (Jan 1997 issue) as he urges the
acquisition of art as "the perfect status symbol, expensive,
exclusive" It is good to have the commercial context of this work
laid bare, unvarnished by ideas of quality or value. At the same time a
similar phenomenon is current in packaging young white British pop bands.
Before discussing the work of two artists in some detail, I want to look at the role of the imagination in arts practice, which I see as being central to the discussion of aesthetics. Imagination is both a site for activity and the invitation for response from the viewer. It creates a space, or the possibility of engagement. What I understand by 'the space of the imagination' is the ability to produce a place in one's work for the possibility of change. The space of the imagination is both about an openness in the way that the work is made and, crucially, the intention in which it is to be read. If the work has imagination or the possibility for imaginative engagement within it this creates an "open" response that can allow for critical engagement. It has to be distinguished from work without that sense of possibility that appears "closed". The "closed" work may still allow for many interpretations, but there is no direction or space for the imagination to open into or develop. The place of the imagination is central in connection with my concerns for the development of an ethically aware arts practice.
One assumes that all aesthetic work involves use of the imagination. While some art practices create and promote an imaginative journey in the viewer, exploring and extending possibilities, other work, currently in fashion, appears to promote a banality of thought and an ironic detachment from feeling and commitment. These works are not characterised by any single artist or formal methods, rather the lack of an ethical dimension is the common factor. The crucial emotion informing these works seems to be connected to a distanced position combined with a refusal to locate honestly an artistic intention. Instead of an ethical use of 'the space of the imagination', there is often a cynical and self-conscious use of the mechanisms of consumerism. I believe this goes beyond individual practice and reflects a broader political and philosophical framework of ideas linked to late capitalism and post-modernism. I intend to discuss distinctions that underlie these divergent practises in relation to their ethical implications.
It is a commonplace that art has to be seen in a social and political
context. The clear implication is for the art work as a 'pure' aesthetic
entity as against the artist and art product in a broader context of
social change. Clearly, the discussion of context for the art work is
important. Walter Benjamin's lecture of 1934 'The Author As Producer' is
invaluable here;
"Social relations, as we know, are determined by production
relations. And when materialist criticism approached a work, it used to
ask what was the position of that work vis-a -vis the social production
relations of its time. ..instead of asking what is the position of a work
vis-a -vis the the productive relations of its time, does it underwrite
these relations, is it reactionary, or does it aspire to overthrow them ,
is it revolutionary... I should like to ask: what is its position within
them .. This question concerns the function of a work within the ...
production relations of its time. In other words, it is directly concerned
with ...technique."
I take Benjamin's notion of "within " productive relations to be the crux of relations, networks, affinities, sympathies, contacts which defines the common interests of a particular artist, with those that show, sell, admire, promote, buy , deal or write about him or her and like minded fellow artists. In short, "within" amounts to belonging to "the gang". What is important here is to note that this is not an analysis of class structure, but Benjamin advising of the necessity to examine the infrastructure that surrounds arts production. For the contemporary arts world, this is pluralistic, with a mesh of commercial and publically funded arts spaces, the arts press ranging from Frieze magazine to Modern Painters, and private collectors to institutional buyers. Currently, the work of Sarah Lucas, Sam Taylor Wood and the artists group Bank, based in Old Street, North London receive attention as avant-garde and on the edge, while operating successfully within the commercial marketplace, the arts and cultural establishment (e.g. Banks premises are funded by the Arts Council of England). While being promoted as the cutting edge of an alternative tradition, they are actively engaged in a celebration of these product relations. The mix of public and private sponsorship which now distinguishes London's ICA, the role of collectors like Saatchi and their links to other key collectors and media celebrities (e.g. Damian Hirsts' well publicised associations with Dave Stewart and David Bowie) creates an atmosphere of commercial and consumer incorporation while lending to all sides the frisson of being both contemporary and risk-taking.
Historically, the avant-garde has had a more ambivalent attitude towards consumerism, since the embrace of commercial values contradicted the oppositional stance of many artists. As an example, Ad Reinhardt, a committed Communist for some of his career at least and active socialist at other times, avowed a doctrine of 'art as art' where "art is art and everything else is everything else", including politics. This radical split between political action and art work generated a formalist approach to art practice that still has a strong following amongst artists today, for example Callum Innes. On the other side, and much in opposition to this position is the work of artists such as Nancy Spero, who have combined a life of political and collective action with an arts practice that includes specific political references and a particular open-ended approach to formal issues with a greater range of stylistic concerns. Whereas the ICA in London mounted a major exhibition of her work in 1987, shifts in the cultural and political climate, including exhibition policy make it impossible to imagine the same institution showing her work today. It is this type of cultural policy change in the last decade in Britain and the implications in terms of wider ethical and political debate and action that need further consideration...
Copyright © : Liz Ellis,1997
N.Paradoxa : Issue 2, February 1997
Link
to Part 2 : The Role of the Ethical Dimension in Arts Practice