Kuspit and Collings on Modern Art

 ‘The End of Art’ by Donald Kuspit, 2004 &  Matthew Collins ‘This is Modern Art’ parts 3 and 4, tv 1999

The cover of Kuspit’s book shows part of a Damien Hirst installation ‘Home Sweet Home’ - a full ashtray. Kuspit tells us that a cleaner cleared away the whole mess not realising it was supposed to be art.

This is the whole argument of this book - that art has become debased, that commerce and reproductions have taken over, that contemplation and beauty are lost.
Kuspit elaborates this argument rather repetitively, saying that ‘both art and life are meaningless in postmodernity’.

He finds Duchamp perverse and joyless. Technology is soulless.
There is a lot about artists who have used faeces.
He calls Dubuffet ‘a graphic demonstration of a laboriously achieved infantilism’.

Van Gogh is dedicated and pure. Warhol personifies art as a sordid business.

I was surprised to see to see Manet disliked and described as indifferent to people because I think his art shows a great interest and empathy for them.
He sees Sean Scully as admirable - whereas I find him dull, repetitive and bland.
He thinks Pollock is bad, on the side of chaos, whereas I find him ordered, flowing and rhythmic.

Kuspit wants art to ‘makes aesthetic harmony out of the tragedy of life’.
He lists a few artists he thinks have still made  masterpieces, including Paula Rego, Jenny Saville and Lucien Freud.

I have to agree that our era is one of decadence and of anything goes uncertainty.
However I think Kuspit’s definition of art is too limiting.
Even accepting his terms I can’t agree with which artists are found wanting.
And by the end of the denunciations I find the rant wearying.

Matthew Collings ‘This is Modern Art’ is a tv series from 1999’ still available on YouTube.

In number 3 Collings starts by saying the pursuit of beauty is no longer an aim of artists, but goes on to show that on the contrary beauty has changed and expanded what form it takes..

In part 4 ‘nothing matters’ he talks of an emptiness in art, shown very literally in Yves Klein’s ‘The Void’ which is an empty room.

Despite his strange dispassionate tone of just accepting a variety of art and not judging it Collings lincludes many examples and arouses my interest in them.

It’s the reverse of Kuspit’s judgements whilst accepting the same bewildering plethora of art that seeks ever more odd invention and ‘spectacularization.’

Kuspit feels alienated by many of our current art objects whereas Collings seems bemused but accepting that art changes with the times.

Both tell us something of what is going on and invite us to think about it.
I would say aesthetics remain in that whatever art is doing it can be done beautifully or not.

Would that we could have another series on tv that introduces contemporary art in a thoughtful way.

Jane Sand exhibition

 Jane Sand had an exhibition at Redwing gallery in July.

This is an unusual place, run as a not for profit community enterprise. There is a cafe with vegan food and often musical events with visiting musicians or the in house band which has a  South American Cuban style in keeping with the leftwing green politics of which one can find news by dropping in.

Jane Sand is a well known colourful character with strong views who gives painting workshops at Redwing and recently gave a lively talk on the writing of Edna O’Brien.
She has been known to go out at night to paint in the wilds of West Penwith where she lives, working quickly and returning with paint marked clothes.

The show was described to me by one visitor as the best he had ever seen at Redwing and it made an enormous visual impact of wild expressionist colour and brushwork with thick paint using every inch of the surface.

Strangely the artist seemed to have flung the pictures up in an unusually crowded manner as if using any available nail left by others with none of the considered spacing one is accustomed to.

A couple of the works had figures, one a naked woman rather alarmingly cavorting in a grave yard.
I preferred the landscapes -  a gnarled tree, a mine depicted on the anniversary of a terrible disastrous accident there, a church seen at night enlivened with colour and the vigour of its application.
The famous ‘men-an-tol’ Bronze Age holed stone relic on the moors was made extra dramatic by the compositional diagonal and a moonlit sky.

Jane Sand had kept the prices mostly under £300, wanting them to be affordable.

Her work deserves to be more widely known and is clearly the work of a passionate artist with a wonderfully authentic expression of excitement and liveliness.



 

Walter langley Exhibition at Penlee House

 Walter Langley Exhibition at Pendeen House, Penzance, 25 May - 1 October.

This extensive show of 60 works by Walter Langley commemorates  the 100th anniversary of his death aged 70 in 1922
One picture has been sent from Texas. It’s long title ‘In Faith and Hope the World Will Disagree but All Mankind’s Concern is Charity’ indicates where he stood on social questions.

There are oil paintings but also large watercolours in which Langley documented the lives of working  folk in Newlyn, with the whom he had empathy as he came from an ordinary background in Birmingham. He was a pioneer in Newlyn, setting up his studio in 1882.

What struck me as I looked at these narrative works showing tragedy and sorrows was how much tastes have changed. Yet all over Europe and America at this period art dealt with the painful drama of ordinary life. Photography became available but many of these artists employed locals to sit and be studied at length and Langley shows a great sympathy for his characters in the gentle detail and subtle colour he uses.
He shows men reading newspapers, one is entitled ‘the politician’, and Langley is reported to have taken an interest in politics himself at a time when workers had such terribly hard lives. Langley was a friend of the atheist anti establishment liberal MP for Northampton, Charles Bradlaugh,  and was known and criticised in Newlyn for sharing similar views.

Now pain and death, living in poverty, hoping for loved ones to return safely from fishing, reading a message from a far away lover, are all dealt with in other media - a news story, a film, an appeal for support online etc.

Langley does so much in these works to engage our feelings alongside our admiration for his remarkable technique and careful composition.
Having one image and time to contemplate it one to one makes a great impact and the images would have reached a wide audience in exhibitions.

The portrait of Langley at his easel by Carey Morris and a droll caricature by Fred Hall indicate that Langley had a lively and jaunty disposition.

Seeing the variety of Langley’s works is very impressive and I think this show will make his place in art history more secure.
He is part of a whole movement of artists with similar interests but his particular observation and intensity of feeling stand out.