David Emery OnlineArt is bollocks
5 October 2006
Not all art.
Some of it is brilliant; Kandinski, Dali, Magritte, Mondrian.
But some – most – is pitiful. While it may have thought and reasoning behind it, that by itself does not make it good.
Creativity by itself does not good art make. Creativity is only useful if you have a problem to solve, not an idea looking for a problem.
The incredibly intricate reasoning behind most modern art is quite simply bollocks – simply the by-product of a broken schooling system that is breeding ever large quantities of “artists” that have been trained to come up with bullshit that justifies whatever technically simple work they have come up with. Not that the “difficulty” of a piece is what justifies it or makes it brilliant, but the idea has to be interesting; unique; innovative.
All of this bollocks really is art, however – unlike the Daily Mail et al I’m not trying to decry things as “not art” – but it’s simply bad art.
Art is not good just because it’s art.
On Monday the shortlist for the Tuner Prize went on display. Rebecca Warren’s exhibit and Mark Titchner’s exhibit are both quite obviously utter bollocks. They both show no creativity, and prop up the absence of any good ideas with traditional art-school “they evoke an emotional resonance”-style rubbish.
The obvious winner is easily the most challenging piece, Phil Collins’ exhibit which features a live, working office entirely based in the gallery. While I’m sure many people will question its “art-ness”, it shows far more creativity then all of the other offerings put together. Sure, it has the traditional bollocks backing it up, but it’s doing something new.
And it’s becoming ever harder to do that.