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Bricks, Dung, Sharks & Unmade Beds: The World Of 'Modern Art'

Timble said:
There's an opportunity for some artist to box the ashes, perhaps in 3 inch perspex cubes, and sell them as 'Carbonised Art.'

Put in some explanatory text about the inevitability of change, that change is part of existence and yet even after transformation, the history is implicit in the remains, etc and they’re away.

Brilliant.

Perhaps they could be sold back to Saatchi - the ultimate irony.
 
I think it's a great loss.

Personally, I find that it's a great pitty to lose the work of Patrick Heron, an abstract painter who died in 1999. the work stored there was from a private collection contributed by his daughters. A number of other works too I feel it a great pitty should have burned.

It's easy to quickly dismiss stuff because you don't like it, but when a chunk of someone's life goes up in flames, I can't see what there is to rejoice about.
 
Bah! Humbug!

JerryB said:
I don't agree. It's because the work was fairly new that it can't be seen in the context of posterity. If it had survived, the work would have been an important insight for future generations into one particular time. Just because it's not popular and people don't get what it's about, doesn't mean that it's impact on culture as a whole is not worthwhile. Remember that alot of people didn't like or get the Impressionists when they first started showing their work many moons ago...
Yeah. But is that art? It's certainly been labelled as "art". It's a bit like the label "classical music". I've heard a lot of atonal crap that's received that label. There's mountebanks out there that receive the apellation classical composer, almost as soon as they've graduated music school. But, do people really listen to their stuff?

I've read screeds, by the likes of George Steiner, on the need for art and literature to be "difficult". Although the very opacity and obtuseness of most of the difficult, not to say shite, stuff that's so labelled by the citics and literary/artistic establishment just comes across as elitist.

A lot of the stuff that got incinerated the other day was conceptual stuff. Somebody had an idea, a visual pun, perhaps and someone else made it for them, to their specifications. Is that art?

Some of the stuff was of the installation art variety: collections of objects and stuff laid out in an apparently meaningful way and often filling entire rooms, or buildings. Is that art? Some might say it showed extreme anal retention.

The modern stuff that's palmed off on the World at Large as Art is 99% con. and 99% crap. It's all part of an elitist and authoriarian system that uses money and exclusivity to set unreachable, not to mention incomprehensible, standards by which the great mass of people are supposed to understand, that the "Powers that Be", the trendsetters and jetsetters, have rarified and exclusive taste, which must be valid, because it's "Art".

Thereby, wannabe patron, scum like George Saatchi, validate themselves as people of taste and discernment: cutting edge sort of people, by shelling out millions of pounds for their collections of half baked ideas made concrete and creating a market for the rubber stamped trash of their leering and contemptuous anti-artist protegés, who are only too happy to sell on their smelly arse wipings for five and six figure sums. .
 
According to the flimsy philosophical basis of much 'conceptual art' the actual physical materials are only valuable whilst constituting the instantiation of the concept. A man vomiting kebab meat into the gutter on a friday night is just quotidan, put him in a gallery, roped off with a security guard at the door and a ticket-only entrance and it becomes (alledgedly) art. When the man goes home to have lunch he ceases to be art. By this logic, the canvas of Tracey's tent is worthless - especially when its kept in a warehouse and not a gallery or display. In fact, i'm not convinced that packed away out of sight it is in any sense 'art' - its just materials - like a stage that is nothing but girders, boards and piles of cable etc. until errected.

Anyway. Mostly nonsense. Some good pieces lost nonetheless - i liked a painting or two i saw on the BBC site. I hope beyond hope that this symbolic inferno has cleared the ground for a fresh direction in British art... but i doubt it. :)
 
So it's OK if works of art are lost just as long as they're ones you don't like?

I find Constable boaring so it'd be OK if his works where lost?

I hate Dali so lest burn his stuff?

We've lost in one event a hudge part of britain's art history.

If you don't see the tragity of this then you'd be as well burning books.
 
as a stuckist, i'd be contractually obliged to celebrate ;)

but seriously, I like good modern art. It's just that much contemporary conceptual art, especially Britart, is relying on the same idea that Duchamp had with his urinal 75 odd years ago and is therefore not all too modern or all too interesting.
 
I don't think i said that.
Did I? :confused:

My post was more evaluating what has been lost than saying it was good they were ashes. I wouldn't advocate burning them if the fire hadn't happened!

edit: VQ. One point i was making is that the 'art' isn't the thing we lost - we lost materials. In traditional styles the 'art' is housed in the materials used in its construction. Here, the concept is king and is evoked through display and context. We have (unprecedented) documentary evidence of these artworks so they're not lost. Philosophically speaking they could be recreated with a negligible loss of meaning. (I speak here mainly of the 'installations') :)
 
Who said it was Art? Just Who Decided That?

The Virgin Queen said:
So it's OK if works of art are lost just as long as they're ones you don't like?

I find Constable boaring so it'd be OK if his works where lost?

I hate Dali so lest burn his stuff?

We've lost in one event a hudge part of britain's art history.

If you don't see the tragity of this then you'd be as well burning books.
Yes, but who said it was "Art"?

Charles Saatchi's cheque book?

And to say being sceptical about a warehouse full of premium priced, luxury crap, is the same as setting fire to it...

No. Take a look at the glory that was the Inca civiliation, the Maya, Rome, Eqypt, Sumeria. etc...

Gone, all gone. And little but meaningless scraps and signs remain.

The whole modern concept of what constitutes "Art" is a decadent and elitist con. Just like the corrupt society that's given afterbirth to it.
 
The Yithian said:
I don't think i said that.
Did I? :confused:

My post was more evaluating what has been lost than saying it was good they were ashes. I wouldn't advocate burning them if the fire hadn't happened!

but if you can't see why loosing key works that describe a movement is bad then...my first post was an angry one but I'd still ask why it's OK if art goes up in smoke as long as it's art you don't like.

As I said if Constable's works went up in smoke tomorow I would be sad even though I dispise his works.
 
The Yithian said:
edit: VQ. One point i was making is that the 'art' isn't the thing we lost - we lost materials. In traditional styles the 'art' is housed in the materials used in its construction. Here, the concept is king and is evoked through display and context. We have (unprecedented) documentary evidence of these artworks so they're not lost. Philosophically speaking they could be recreated with a negligible loss of meaning. (I speak here mainly of the 'installations') :)

Everyone's quick today!
See my edit.
:cool:
 
Re: Who said it was Art? Just Who Decided That?

AndroMan said:
Yes, but who said it was "Art"?

Charles Saatchi's cheque book?

in the same way who says that you should deside what's art and what isn't?

I'd never claim to be qualified enough to damn any work/
 
The Virgin Queen said:
We've lost in one event a hudge part of britain's art history.

Not really. We've only lost the tinsy-tiny little bit that was owned by Saatchi.
 
The Yithian said:
Everyone's quick today!
See my edit.
:cool:

I'll let you away with it this time :)

However can a work be the same if it is simply 'recreated?'

What of the paintings that where lost? You can't recreat the brush strokes so they're exactly the same so it will be a difrent work.
 
Arthur ASCII said:
Not really. We've only lost the tinsy-tiny little bit that was owned by Saatchi.

Oh that's OK then.

How can we asses a movement if we don't have it's key works? How can we look at the chain of how art changes and develops if there's a hudge hole in the avalable works?
 
I agree with TVQ on this one, not keen on modern art myself, but I'm saddened by the loss. After all, I haven't seen every single piece that was destroyed, so how can I possibly judge even whether I would have liked it, let alone whether it was "art"?

Mind you, was there any Gilbert and George destroyed? That'd cheer me up no end.
 
beakboo said:
After all, I haven't seen every single piece that was destroyed, so how can I possibly judge even whether I would have liked it, let alone whether it was "art"?

I dearly wanted to see Everyone I ever slept with but alas it is no more. I'm deaply sadend by that.
 
The Virgin Queen said:
Oh that's OK then.

How can we asses a movement if we don't have it's key works? How can we look at the chain of how art changes and develops if there's a hudge hole in the avalable works?

Calm down.. I was only trying to cheer you up.

It would be better to direct your anger at the chap who bought it all up and hid it away from the public inside a fire-trap of a warehouse.
 
Re: Re: Who said it was Art? Just Who Decided That?

The Virgin Queen said:
in the same way who says that you should deside what's art and what isn't?

I'd never claim to be qualified enough to damn any work/

Quite.

I think the people roasting marshmallows right now are the ones who'd secretly like everyone else to like what they like ;) and damn their opinion otherwise. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but seriously, some people (generally speaking) dont see further than the words Tracy Emmin and tent and on that basis formulate an opinion of what art is and what's acceptable and what's not clean forgetting that other works went up in flames too, such as the work of Patrick Heron (1922/23- 1999). Not a large body of his work, but cartainly some of the best examples of his work. Gone.

Said this before, so I'll say it again, strip away taste and consider, this is people's work going up in flames. I can't see what their is to dance about personally.

It's like when windsor went up in flames....largely the reaction there was people saying "good, can't stand the royals anyway" (helpful and considerate, I know), not considering that actually a fire in any home is a pretty crap thing to happen to anyone. Sparking the "do you like the royals or don't you?" debate...what that has to do with someone losing their personal possessions to a fire I don't know. Still....that's for the ones roasting the marshmellows who no doubt laugh hard when people fall flat on their face;) I suppose there's a truth in there somewhere that people tend to gloat at other people's misfortunes.

I feel sorry for the daughters of Patrick Heron personally.
 
Re: Re: Who said it was Art? Just Who Decided That?

Hook Innsmouth said:
Who said it wasn't?

try the media who, particularly in the case of Tracy Emin, deliberatly misrepresented the work to get good copy.

When she exibited 'My Bed' it was reported as being her actual bed. I tsake it they have no knowlage of art if they think a thing in art is the thing it represents...then there was the misrepresentation of Everyone I ever slept with as being about sex. It wasn't, it was about intimesy and had the names of her family and her aborted feotus on it.

I'll resist discusing why Emin produced art by discusing how it used themes and techniques prevelent in craftworks and how this alowed her to pass comment on Women's experence...
 
The problem I have with the current state of the art world is the amount of money involved for apparently little effort (sweeping statement there, I know ;) ) Artists are supposed to be destitute no-hopers, not swanning off to "celebrity" parties every few minutes!

Personally, I loved the infamous pile of bricks in the Tate Gallery all those years ago as it appealed to my sense of the ridiculous (I can't remember now who the artist was or what the claimed "meaning" was, but I'm sure someone will tell me). It worked as "art" because it was new and different even though, at the end of the day, it was just a pile of bricks. It said something about the times and perhaps some of Hurst & co's work says something about now. I'm just not sure that anyone is taking any notice anymore, least of all the "artists" or "collectors".

Hmmm, maybe I should start a new art movement - "putting" words in "quotes" for no apparent reason :D

Jane.
 
Actually, it is sad that it's gone. Whether it's art or dross is irrelevant, it's someones pride and joy and it's a bit mean to laugh at them losing it.
 
Arthur ASCII said:
Calm down.. I was only trying to cheer you up.

It would be better to direct your anger at the chap who bought it all up and hid it away from the public inside a fire-trap of a warehouse.

:blush: I'm alowed to over react now and then arn't I? :)

More than Satchii I'm angry at the artists who alowed their work to get so expensive (and they had a large part in it) that national colections couldn't aford it.
 
I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that similar arguements were flying around about the worth and use of art, etc. 100 years ago. Sure, the art market now is an added factor, but reactions to various forms of art are still the same. I'm sure that 100 years time the same discussions will be going on too ;)
 
My definition of art is "Something of human construction designed to cause an emotional response"

This is a nice broad definition that can cover anything from Rembrandt to Emin. It then leaves me free to concentrate on the more important question "do I like it?"

For what its worth my opinion of modern art is that the only emotional response it is designed to cause is shock and revulsion. But this may be because most of the modern art I see is that which appears in the popular press (the press is therefore partly complicit in creating the current art scene)

On the subject of the fire I can sympathise with artists that have lost works which have taken time and effort to create. I have little sympathy for Saatchi who is a rich bastard.
 
Mike P said:
On the subject of the fire I can sympathise with artists that have lost works which have taken time and effort to create. I have little sympathy for Saatchi who is a rich bastard.

Not only that, he's a rich, Tory, bastard.
 
I do appreciate genuine conceptual art, and if its true to its nature then being burned to a crisp is part of the natural progression of the piece itself and we should glory in it. Nothing lasts forever. These pieces can still teach us something, if we are moved by their destruction.
 
Quick conspiracy theory: The fire was a set-up by Saatchi for some added media exposure (and notoriety) in these days when Britart is on the wane.
 
Faggus said:
Quick conspiracy theory: The fire was a set-up by Saatchi for some added media exposure (and notoriety) in these days when Britart is on the wane.

Or maybe as an old-fashioned insurance fraud.
 
MAd Ranting Thickie Blockhead Alert!

The Virgin Queen said:
Oh that's OK then.

How can we asses a movement if we don't have it's key works? How can we look at the chain of how art changes and develops if there's a hudge hole in the avalable works?
In the Netherlands they have special lavatory pans that allow you to inspect your movements at leisure before you flush.

Seriously, I'm not denying that that what was consumed there, in Saatchi's Inferno, was "art", but it is the tyranny of, "Art" I'm complaining about.

If people are trying to deny that some of the "Artists" whose work was incinerated haven't been have a laugh at the expense of their patrons, with some of their output, then I'm afraid I simply don't believe it.

Anybody can make art and make meaningful art, at that. But, it seems to take a certain kind of Establishment Approved Trendy to make "Art" and I'm not having that.

I'm getting a bit too old to be told what I should consider of worth and know full well just how much of value really gets cast aside as pearls before swine.

;)
 
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