DISCOURSE AND EXPLANATIONS DO NOT EQUAL ART
These are some of the works that are being talked about – and probably just temporarily so – in the history of contemporary art. And not because they have any merit. What they do have is a lot of mindless, confusing and idle discourse surrounding them. They have no art.
Yoko Ono conned viewers into «witnessing» the gradual decay of an apple in Apple, (You can see she didn’t work too hard on the title) turning the passage of time into the central concept, according to her for all apples rot and decay, nothing artistic about it. Ai Weiwei «shocked» audiences by deliberately destroying a two-thousand-year-old ceramic vessel in Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. Another one who didn’t work too hard on the title. And he purchased and dropped two as this was done as a photographic documentation in 1995. Tracey Emin «exhibited» her own unmade bed in My Bed (another one who did not have to think much about the title) as an intimate self-portrait. A self-portrait? Of what? Detritus as art? And, of course the master con-artist Marcel Duchamp who «transformed» a urinal into Fountain, perhaps the most influential ready-made in history. Which he did not even do as the urinal was brought to New York by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a Dada artist and poet who signed it «R. Mutt.»
So, as you can see, all lacked vision and imagination. None of them could even come up with a name that showed that they had actually put some thought into the «work». Weiwei was supposedly rebelling against the ancient ways of transmission of culture. But he purchased the two urns, therefore becoming an active participant in the system that he was «criticising» as an «artist-activist.» Major hypocrisy artistically contrived to fool the world. And many were/are fooled.
The same «conceptual» approach appears in works such as Dónde dormir by Eugenio Ampudia. Now this «conceptual» artist really amounts to practically nothing, I do not even know why I mention him. He has no ideas, no artistic sense and no originality. Comedian—the in-famous banana taped to a wall—by Maurizio Cattelan, and Vaso medio lleno (another thoughtless title) by Wilfredo Prieto, where the title and the accompanying explanation become inseparable from the object itself. He should have drank the whole glass of water then named the «work» Empty Glass. Oh, wait Empty Glass (1980) was an album by Pete Tonwshend, a real and true artist.
The culmination of this tendency may well be Salvatore Garau and his work Io sono: an «immaterial sculpture» consisting of empty space that was nevertheless sold as a work of art. Here, the physical work disappears entirely, leaving only the narrative that justifies its existence. You can fool some of the people some time, and all fools all the time. This one really went beyond the norm. The fact that Garau sold it is truly the work of art.
I know many critics, curators and collectors defend these works as milestones in conceptual art. I do not respect that position, I laugh at it. For me, these pieces are not art. They are rubbish. They may provoque, and aspire to be social experiments or think they are philosophical statements, but they do not achieve any of that in the least bit. They are tricks and lies to fool the gullible public and the «elite» that then proclaim this «stuff» as art.
Art can—and often should—be provocative, revolutionary, uncomfortable and deeply critical. But none of those qualities, by themselves, are enough. And none of the «works» mentioned in this article do any of that. A work of art must possess a value that transcends the explanatory text hanging beside it. If the discourse is removed and all that remains is an ordinary object—or nothing at all—then, in my view, it is the explanation that is being admired, not the artwork. We must all trust our instincts, our taste and our knowledge and not let the new «gurus» of the art world decide that rubbish is «art».
(I will not put images of these «works» as I do not consider them worthy to be reproduced. I only mention them to bring forth my premise that «Art is the search» and not the «ready made».
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