But Beauty Is So Hard
Via Kate and lifted from the comments here, some more “public” art, chosen by our betters to make us better people:
“The question of beauty has been brought up a lot in this debate, which is a really provocative and sometimes problematic conversation,” she said. “I don’t think all work that is made in a public setting should necessarily be made with the mandate of making a space more beautiful.”
The locals, however, don’t seem terribly impressed.
The artist in question, Keeley Haftner, describes her work as “emerging through notions of tradition, satire, gender, archive, labour, and transience.” Readers will be thrilled to discover that Ms Haftner’s previous efforts are no less colossal in their scope and profundity. Behold, for instance, this. If further evidence of greatness is required, there’s also the following 2012 performance piece, happily captured on video. The explanatory text reads,
In the video Waste Warrior Eats Apple, the protagonist (a ‘waste warrior’) attempts to consume an apple grown from petroleum products, having evolved out of a waste-induced Saskatchewan apocalypse. Eating an apple has long stood for female inadequacy – Eve’s original sin, the golden apple of coveted perpetual youth, the envy-inspired poisoning of young Snow White. But this warrior projects forward with an act of forced evolution, attempting to sustain herself on the very source of both female and human destruction.
Ponder that while you watch. And no skipping to the end.
Yes, hers is a mighty talent, a force to be reckoned with.
In the comments below the original link, Joan said,
Every pothole in every road must have already been filled in then.
Well, Ms Haftner has at least, albeit inadvertently, captured the ethos of so much “public” art, which is to say, socialised art in which the public has no say, and the mindset of the people it very often attracts. What with beauty being so “problematic” and, perhaps more to the point, difficult to achieve by people whose self-regard outstrips their ability to a comical degree. And so the good people of Saskatoon will get what they’re given. By people who know best. It’s the egalitarian way.
Despite a public reaction reported as “overwhelmingly negative,” Ms Haftner tells us that she “remains firmly unapologetic for having made and presented the work.” Her sculpture, which is expected to remain in situ for a year, has, she says, been “successful” in “promoting dialogue about public work in the city of Saskatoon.” Apparently she’s “provoking complex conversations.” By which Ms Haftner means, the public’s dislike of her work and its taxpayer funding somehow validates both. It’s a conceit we’ve seen before of course, being as it is a standard lie of the talent-deficient narcissist and social parasite.
Update:
Ooh, I am chastised. And so are you heathens.
“Incidentally, is anyone else having trouble loading this page in Chrome? Explorer seems to load it okay.”
I was earlier today, but it’s working fine now.
BTW, it looks like I dropped a closing italics bracket thingy on the Friday Epiphany thread…again…apologies.
“I don’t see why there is so much vitriol aimed at someone for making an artwork that we don’t think is any good. Most artworks at all times have been no good, that’s why making art is risky. Mixing it up with anger over misspent tax dollars is just silly.”
The people whose forcibly taken money was use to fund, literally, garbage, have every right to direct vitriol at the “artist” for being a parasite, and their elected council for doing so.
But I guess when you’re someone that believes in the “fairness” of state theft of peoples property, it’s better for you to tell people to shut it and take their lumps, right Minnow?
“I can’t blame Ms Haftner for taking the job when they offered it.”
I can. If she wanted to be “edgy” and “controversial” and those other buzzwords that “artists” like to use to describe themselves when they’re not, then she should have gone against the grain done it without coerced money.
As an aside, it’s funny how the left aligned itself with the labour movement to get workers better pay(among other things), only to turn around and forcibly take more and more of it away.
*Edit*
As an aside, it’s funny how the left aligned itself with the labour movement to get workers better pay(among other things), only to turn around and forcibly take more and more of it away, and spend on garbage like this “art”, while abdicating their responsibility in other areas. To their discredit, this mentality has infected “conservatives” also. Then they have the gall to tell you how “silly” you are when you take issue with this state of affairs.
I suppose when it’s not your money, who gives a crap, eh?
MikeG81 also their labour “theory” of value she’s done a huge markup on the raw products used in her work. What a capitalist exploiter of the masses she is.
It’s typical for the top echelons of collectors to be active on museum boards of directors and acquisition committees. Even apart from this they donate money and art. I never heard how it was resolved but a couple of years ago Saatchi tried to bequeath his collection to the state, but took his dollies and marched home when the state told him that it didn’t want every last bit of it. Saatchi got it in his head that the whole collection was golden and the nation would take it wholesale or not at all.
The relationship is symbiotic. Collectors rely on museums to validate their collections as museum-worthy, and the museums rely on the collectors for largesse. This ends up causing market distortions all over the system just as any crony-capitalist arrangement would, but what makes the art world unique is that it also causes distortions in the marketplace of ideas, which is why contemporary art is a political and philosophical monoculture, or nearly so. No one is ever going to make art that seems to be against recycling.
Market forces cannot determine the value of something as subjective as a painting in the same way they can a product like an iPhone.
Value isn’t price. The value of a painting is the pleasure of looking at it; the value of the phone is the sleekness of its design and its utility. The price of these things reflect their value imperfectly – always imperfectly – and the market is an attempt to come to an agreement about price. However imperfect the relation, there is one, and thus price distortions can be connected to value distortions and vice-versa.
Also, it’s not uncommon for painters with decent chops to get into another line of art-making because trying to distinguish yourself on chops alone is horrifyingly difficult. I’ve seen good artists get badly derailed by this – they have skill but don’t have a lot to say with it, or they try to bolt contemporaneity onto the work like that repeatedly overpainted self-portrait by Haftner linked by OJ. There are a lot of ways for art to fail.
This reminded me of something our host linked to two years ago: genuine art made from garbage. Which required actual skill and craft, and needed no explanations.
I suppose the question is whether you’re happy with a publicly funded taste-correcting caste steering us to the light. As you can imagine, I’m a tad sceptical.
No one will ever ‘fix’ the Arts Council. You can only stop funding it with public money.
No one will ever ‘fix’ the Arts Council.
In the Cargo Culture thread over at Franklin’s, an artist named John bemoaned democratic governments losing the ability to “influence the course of art.” Influence he regarded as now being monopolised by very wealthy collectors. Or “robber barons,” as he put it. As I said there, I’m not at all convinced that it’s the job of the state to do anything of the kind. It sounds more than a little presumptuous.
The Arts Council is the British state’s attempt to “influence the course of art,” to pick and choose for us, to distort the market, and to blow our tiny minds with “challenging” work, etc. Even on its own dubious terms it hasn’t exactly been successful and it’s hardly democratic. We, the taxpayers, have no say at all in how our earnings are spent. Spent by a very narrow and politically homogenous social group. Hence the colossal self-indulgence and parasitic sense of entitlement.
And yes, it’s hard to see how any rearrangement of its parts might rescue the Arts Council from what it has become. Bloat, dysfunction and cronyism seem pretty much inevitable given its premise, its political incline, and the people it attracts. It’s what any vast, socialised art bureaucracy will in time become. The question, then, is: Is such a thing worth having? Does the state have any business in choosing and filtering artistic production, picking winners, supposedly on “our” behalf?
To be fair to John, he wasn’t bemoaning it, just noting that it had happened. He actually agrees with you that influencing the course of art is not the job of the state. For you it’s a matter of principle, and for him it’s an observation that democracy has done a lousy job of it, but you arrive at the same conclusion.
I would not only take out the Arts Councils of the world, I would cause any museum showing work by a living artist to lose its nonprofit status. Still better would be to tax no one, but the exemptions serve a dual purpose to relieve the institution of financial liabilities and confer upon them a status as a producer of public good. Deprived of that status, much contemporary dreck could be handily rejected as a game of the rich and not taken as cultural patrimony.
Judging from her written work, I doubt Ms Haftner could understand a “complex conversation”. “Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.”(Hobbes).
We have ‘educated’ (though, more accurately, ‘instructed’) vast numbers of people beyond the level of their innate intelligence. Ms Haftner is a good example. And Charles Saatchi is another, I’m afraid. Charles Saatchi is free to spend his wealth exactly how he wishes; but the likes of Ms Haftner are sucking on the public teat.
Many in Saskatoon come from a farming background, and farmers have a habit of calling a turd a turd.
I’m sure in Toronto it would be a big hit.
Let’s just cut to the chase, okay? It’s not about art, it’s about the left funding artists of varying ability with other people’s money to make sure the left’s cultural message gets as many outlets as possible – IOWs laundering taxpayer money they lied to get into instant campaign cash. Why do you think so many great artists went with Hitler and Stalin?
Rich Rostrom: “…Which required actual skill and craft, and needed no explanations.”
Reminds me of this piece from our favourite paper claiming that Britpop was “a cultural abomination that set music back”.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/apr/24/britpop-cultural-abomination-music-blur-oasis
As I read it I couldn’t help noticing that it only discussed acts’ image and attitude, and a wee bit of their lyrics, but made no mention of what they sounded like. Which to my mind is the main point of music. Compare that to conceptual art, and it seems to me our critical culture doesn’t have a clue what to make of anything aesthetic. Words and personalities, that’s all they know how to cope with.
Artist manages to have a major effect on art gallery architecture.
I am born and raised in Saskatoon and come from farming families on both sides, to preface. It saddens all that I believe is truly good so deeply to see such ignorant and violently senseless comments made out of selfishness and an inability to think beyond an immediate and primitive reaction. So many times I wish I could respond to individual comments made, because there is so much understanding and thought that is completely ignored in this ludicrously one-sided back-patting. But how do you address a flood of ignorance, a torrent of hatred and insecurity? How do you speak to the angry voices with pitchforks and torches? You are the witch hunters and you project your own inadequacies onto others without any self-critical thought or capacity for ideas outside of your own selfishness. Good art causes us to ask questions of ourselves and the reason you hate this art is because you refuse to ask yourself any meaningful questions. Art is life and not everything in life is shallowly “beautiful” like a flower, the most beautiful things in life have meaning and are complex and challenge us sometimes with unpleasant experiences. Your soul will remain undeveloped and your life without meaning if you allow your ignorance to control you. In art, as in life, you must ask yourself the most important question: why? And ask it honestly. Give yourself some time. And for most of you, a lot of time.