Does anyone ever feel like Fine Art is often parallel with the story of The Emperor's Clothes?
For those of you that aren't familiar with this story (I don't mean to insult your intelligence but I was talking to a friend about this earlier in the week and he thought it was about an emperor that wanted to turn his town into a water park. Then he got turned into a llama...) it's about two men that tell the emperor that they have this amazing enchanted material. Supposedly it's the most beautiful fabric that has ever existed, but it is invisible to fools and idiots. Obviously there is no fabric but nobody wants to admit all they're seeing is the emperor's flabby bits because they don't want everyone else to think they're an idiot.
And so, what I'm trying to say is even if everybody hated or, to be less extreme, didn't understand a work or exhibition, they may not want to say anything and look like an uncultured philistine!
This 'moral' applies perfectly to a show called 'The Bland Project' that's on at Performance Space right now. The aim of this piece is to explore the bland and repetitive motions and movements of everyday life. Almost like a human version of the quotidian or throw away object. After the show when everybody was discussing it over wine and cheese they were all saying how interesting it was and how fascinated they were by four men doing the same movement and presenting the same images of them doing the same images for 15 minute stints. But really the whole hour I was watching I was bored and I wanted to go home to bed. I actually wrote this in my head while watching the show! And as far as I could tell (I did some serious observing) everybody else was pretty bored too.
So my question is this. Has anyone else ever seen a work or an exhibition that made no sense to them, or where you've seriously asked yourself, 'is THIS art?', but didn't want to say anything because a critic or a book or a majority says that this is 'high' or 'fine' art?
NB With 'The Bland Project', as the name suggests, it was perhaps supposed to be monotonous, and have an aspect of the un-entertaining (did I just invent a word?) Perhaps they were intentionally created an 'Emperor's New Clothes' situation to gauge people's reactions, or to point out this behaviour in contemporary art crowds. OR perhaps I've fallen into my own trap and don't want to seem like an uncultured philistine!
2 comments:
I'm sad to say I'm definitely guilty of this - I've spent way too much of my life trying to convince myself of certain things about artworks just because most people seem to think that way. It's led to a lot of appreciation but not much actual enjoyment.
As for the note at the bottom, by the sound of things it's a perfectly valid interpretation. Also, reading into things like this is a natural response to something placed within the context of 'art'. People know to look harder at things that are deemed art, and it only really becomes an emperor's new clothes-esque situation when they're changing what they see or believe in accordance with the people around them.
Actually, as some of you know, I've had that experience sometimes. To me, an artist has to take some responsibility for their audience, not just "Art for Art's Sake".
I heard someone comment to a student that Contemporary Art should make the viewer uncomfortable (???). Should it, always?
On the other hand, the 'boring performance, may be an attempt by the artist to create a kind of meditation in the audience.
In Japan (I'm Korean), Japanese people going to a Zen monastery will probably think it's quite boring, while a westerner going there will probably think "Look at the nice rock garden! And the beautiful buildings!". That isn't what they meant, at least hundreds of years ago when the buildings were made. The really don't want anything interesting there to distract from meditation. At least that's my understanding (some people might think differently).
Post a Comment