RE: Exploring the History and Context of Art Exhibitions
I found you as I was checking over some of my earlier posts, and a comment by you almost a month ago that I missed, in regards to my post Damien Hirst’s Shipwreck Fantasy Sinks in Venice:
even if totally unsuccessful, what do you think he was trying to do? Let's apply a critical framework and some context and see what we can come up with! Great to see you posting about exhibitions and Contemporary Art.
My answer to this:
I just seen this comment now, so I am answering late - probably neither you nor anyone else will read it, but writing this answer is, in a way, catharsis.
To your question: That's just it - he is wildly successful. What was he trying to do: make more money! I don't begrudge an artist for success and money, but he departed from creating art for the sake of art, to art for the sake of money. The art market is a strange place. While the majority of artists who are as good or even better than the darlings of the market, this is kept very exclusive to keep the value high. To elevate an artist into the stratosphere where only oligarchs can afford their work is obscene, to put it mildly. To collect any of these so called "Modern Masters", museums not as well funded would have to de-acquisition some of their (what I call) 'real' art by true masters, just to afford keeping up with the times (whatever that means).
I don't know where you stand as a curator, but I wish curators would buck that fashion trend and show what is really out there in the artworld. There are many very good artists out there that can't get displayed and recognized, since most curators play it safe and exhibit those from a very narrow field of the illustrious anointed. The scepticism that Robert Hughes expressed about him (and some others) and collectors like Mugrabi I found refreshing.
Hey there, thanks for writing back. I'm glad we are discussing!
Curators, like people from other disciplines, approach their subject and projects from a wide range of angles and with many strategies.
Many show exclusively those who aren't known, and others do the opposite. It all depends on where you are looking, but I take your note to speak to the more main stream Museum or Institutional curators, and it is well taken. Although I will tell you that being a curator is a huge amount of work, research, traveling, writing, and thinking about art of all kinds from all places. We have to insert some criteria, and at times there are artists who slip through due to their commercial success. But it is rare that their work doesn't hold water as curators are, in some ways, gate keepers who have to explain, justify, insert and interpret narratives around the artwork.
My comment to you was out of interest to break down Hirst's exhibition through a critical lens, not asking what is he doing in a cynical way, but what do you think he is getting at? Or is he simply being critical of the art market and system? I think that is a bit to easy, don't you? His earlier work could be read in so many different ways that aren't simply about excess and $. As a curator I work hard to show artists from a broad range of backgrounds with many ideas, forms, and approaches. There is no formula as to who should and shouldn't be shown, and who is great or not. Many of today's most famous artists started life in a very different place. Warhol came from a mining town near Pittsburgh PA. He was born with none of the advantages you speak of, yet he transcended his conditions and made incredibly important contributions to Art History and Culture. Not everyone can do that unfortunately.
Robert Hughes is trying to apply criteria from a bygone era to the work of today. He doesn't actually say anything here just lays out rather negative statements and cynical questions that he has already decided he knows the answer to. Why ask a question if you have the answer prepped?
Also that video was edited in a way that is hard to swallow. The jump cuts are a bit obvious...and imply that their conversation probably took a different shape if we had seen all of it.
I'm asking you, and others who are interested, to look a bit deeper at Hirst's work. Apply the logic(s) of our society to it, what do you see, what does it bring up? And if he is being critical of opulence then that is a point well made and taken, no?
Let's keep chatting on this and other exhibitions.