An Art Critic Speaks
The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones has been busy enthusing about the new mascot for Partick Thistle Football Club, created by Turner Prize nominee David Shrigley. The mascot, funded privately and described by Mr Jones as the creation of “a tough and honest artist” and “art at its best,” can be seen and studied here, no doubt at great length. However, in championing Mr Shrigley’s handiwork, the Guardian’s art critic inadvertently makes an argument for ending taxpayer subsidy of so-called “public” art:
Populism and good art are incompatible… Good artists… don’t please crowds… That is why most public art in modern Britain is awful… Good artists cannot and will not provide what the public wants. They need to be edgy, challenging, otherwise they will become sell-outs.
Note Mr Jones’ unironic use of the word edgy.
An example of Mr Jones’ idea of that rare thing – great, edgy public art – i.e., paid for coercively by extorting the taxpayer, in this case to the tune of £95,000 – can be found here. Mr Jones described said object as “a very elegant work… redemptive, joyous, liberating.”
I wonder if Mr Jones would consider this work of art
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150618/forest-hills/artist-posts-ancient-word-on-billboard-then-asks-that-nobody-else-uses-it
to be a load of old parbunkells.
So…taking money to make what amuses the government for you to make, where you’ll lose your funding if what you’re making doesn’t please them…is not being a sellout. But making art that pleases anyone other than pretentious art critics does constitute being a sellout? I’m not sure I understand the definitions being used here.
Populism and good art are incompatible… Good artists… don’t please crowds…
That must be why no one *ever* goes to see paintings by Turner, Rembrandt, Monet, Titian, Da Vinci and all those other sell-outs. If only they’d made postcards with the word ‘death’ on them, then they’d be ‘challenging’.
I’m not sure I understand the definitions being used here.
And again, note the inevitable condescension, self-flattery and conceit. In this case, the implication that football fans and the general public are being shocked and distressed by Mr Shrigley’s incredibly “challenging” and edgy art. “Real art,” as Mr Jones puts it. Because Mr Shrigley is so “tough and honest” and because art should always be “aggressive and unsettling.” He’s giving football fans “an awkward integrity to chew over in [their] minds.”
I mean, for fuck’s sake.
There’s a certain contempt for Partick Thistle fans in all this, but I suppose they are considered not edgy enough to know what they should like.
I don’t pay much attention to sports or sports mascots, but even I’ve seen enough of them to wonder why Mr Jones thinks that, for instance, this isn’t “challenging” and this isn’t “edgy,” but somehow this is.
Why, it’s almost as if the man were mouthing utter bollocks.
My father grew up in Glasgow and supported Partick Thistle, or “Partick Thistle nil” as they were known. Affectionately, of course.
Good artists cannot and will not provide what the public wants.
Then don’t take my money.
Sorted.
Fetch cake for Joan. No, the good stuff.
or “Partick Thistle nil” as they were known.
Heh. Those three words prompted a memory of being a small boy sitting by the TV at my grandad’s, playing with Lego while the sports results were announced. As those words were imprinted so strongly on the five-year-old me, they must have been repeated quite a lot.
Mr Shrigley can’t even be original. It’s just Lisa Simpson in a bad mood.
I think the problem he’s having is that, as a visit to say, http://www.deviantart.com , would demonstrate, there are all sorts of people producing a tsunami of art. Yea, much of it’s crap, but a lot of it’s good and it’s flooding the marketplace and, to paraphrase http://www.blackmailersdontshoot.com/2014/11/16/the-invisible-hand-delivers-a-beatdown/
the invisible hand is delivering a beatdown. This beatdown is not just financial; it’s a blow to self-esteem. How special are you for being an artist when everyone’s an artist? How much less special is that parasite on the art world, the critic?
That said, I do find Kingsley’s Mascot oddly appealing. In fact the more I look at it, the more I like it. So maybe I’m the one who’s full of it.
I clicked on the link to that piece about the skip outside Brighton Town Hall.
The page had an embedded ad which featured a muppet and a pawnbroker’s.
Enough said.
What would be interesting to know is whether Mr Jones would have found it in himself to *not* like David Shrigley’s mascot.
One wonders.
In fact the more I look at it, the more I like it. So maybe I’m the one who’s full of it.
As a mascot I suppose it’s fine. Hard to care, really. But would you describe it as “challenging” and “edgy,” as “art at its best”? Does it have “an awkward integrity” that you’re “chewing over in your mind”?
“Partick Thistle nil”
That’s priceless!
I don’t mind the new mascot, though it’s hardly “edgy” or “challenging”. The Australian Football League (AFL) features many “conventional” mascots that regularly terrify the toddlers. Especially the Magpie, with good reason.
But would you describe it as “challenging” and “edgy,” as “art at its best”?
Thanks for the question; you just clarified a point in my mind. The answer is hell no. I like it, but the critic is reading way to much into it. What was he thinking when he called it “edgy”?
They need to be edgy, challenging, otherwise they will become sell-outs.
I’d settle for them being talented and not third-rate moochers.
I’d settle for them being talented
“Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
They need to be edgy, challenging, otherwise they will become sell-outs.
But what’s an artist meant to do when being “edgy and challenging” isn’t edgy and challenging any more?
When David Shrigley’s How Are You Feeling?: At the Centre of the Inside of The Human Brain’s Mind came out in 2013, I heard often enough from the PR agency promoting the book that I considered asking them to take me off their list. Shrigley is corporate faux-brutishness at its finest and is as edgy as an underinflated basketball.
But what’s an artist meant to do when being “edgy and challenging” isn’t edgy and challenging any more?
And it hasn’t been for some time.
And when edgy and challenging is no longer edgy and challenging, I suppose instead you have to be really good at whatever it is you do. And that requires effort and uncommon talent.
You can see the problem.
Oh, the irony.
Having looked at his website I was surprised to find that Shrigley is 46, because looking at his drawings I’d have guessed that when he was at school he achieved notoriety by being able to draw Beavis & Butthead facsimiles and thought to himself “You know, I think I’ll just go with this”.
OK, now I realize I am just another mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, inbred ‘Murkan from South of Mason and Dixon’s line, but I have two questions:
1) How in the hell is any sports mascot considered “art”;
2) Given that this bozo won the Turner Prize it can be assumed that Joseph Turner his own bad self is whirling in his grave like a runaway gyroscope, is he hooked to a generator to make cheap electricity for the neon lights on the rubbish skip ?
But what’s an artist meant to do when being “edgy and challenging” isn’t edgy and challenging any more?
It puts the needy and untalented in a real bind. Being “edgy” and “challenging” is now so terribly conventional. It’s the state-approved default. It’s how you get funding. I can’t offhand think of many contemporary artists who haven’t at some point been described as such, however absurdly. In desperation, quite a few have described themselves as being that. As when Ms Casey Jenkins – she of the vaginal knitting – casually told us, several times, just how “brave” and “downright seditious” people think she is. When they’re not being “afraid” and “outraged,” of course.
OT
Does Jeremy Corbyn actually understand what he’s saying?
Call me controversial, but I’m going to go with ‘No’.
Partick Thistle’s my local team; I live about ten minutes’ walk from the ground. Now, I’m not here to defend Shrigley – I’m not even a football fan – but it should be pointed out that the mascot is only part of a whole new publicity campaign based around the idea of “the Jags” not being the loveable losers any more. (Yeah, right.) In truth, he’s a rather poor representation of the graphic design, which is… well, it’s still pretty ropey, but it does work in the context of the campaign.
And in the end, you have to admit it got them the publicity.
Art should be edgy and challenging, until it challenges the received opinions of Guardianland and then it gets shut down after a series of violent disruptions and ‘protests’.
Modern art is a cynical farce. How many times can you ‘challenge’ the same tired straw men of the Progressive delusion and still keep a straight face?
ART
A friend of mine in Tusla, Okla., when I was about eleven years old. I’d be interested to hear from him. There are so many pseudos around taking his name in vain.
— Chad C. Mulligan, “The Hipcrime Vocab”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar
@ Nik
No.
On this subject he doesn’t.
On other subjects, unfortunately, he does and they are the ones on which he is most alarming. Particularly, his support for Islamic extremists.
Interesting article in leftfootforward about him a few days ago.
Parbunkells? sounds like a nasty symptom of the Plague.
The mascot design is plain shit. Just look at it. This makes me SO MAD.
Modern art is a cynical farce. How many times can you ‘challenge’ the same tired straw men of the Progressive delusion and still keep a straight face?
As long as the money keeps flowing, I suppose.
I offer a balm for the eyes.
Woodblock prints by Kawase Hasui
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/tilda-swinton-slept-in-a-glass-box-at-the-museum-of-modern-art/
I like to think of museum personnel lowering her into the box like the extras in Jurassic Park lowering the queen velociraptor into the security box for safety’s sake.
It looks like one of the Mr. Men gone deeply, horrifyingly wrong, as if Roger Hargreaves had been vouchsafed a glimpse of hell while in the throes of a bad acid trip. Mr. Transgressivism, perhaps?
I like the new Partick Thistle mascot. It’s challenging and edgy.
Look – today’s children have it too easy at football games. There’s no more standing, rioting, or drunk men peeing in the terracing. Modern football clubs have sickeningly nice-guy mascots like Hoopy the Hound or Sammy the Seagull.
Partick Thistle have said where’s the fear? And crafted a shambling nightmare out of felt and velcro.
I like the new Partick Thistle mascot. It’s challenging and edgy.
No. Here is a football mascot being “challenging “, and quite possibly “edgy” too.
#Kingsley is being used/sent up mercilessly on twitter right now
Lancastrian Oik – that streaker was like.
And Bertie Bee was like… bee-have!
Meanwhile, in Maryhill.
Should the outline of the poor bloke inside the mascot costume be that obviously visible?
This is one pisspoor mascot.
Still, nice work if you can get it. And if you can stand yourself for doing it. I personally have too much self-respect (and respect for others) to be an edgy artist.
George Macdonald Fraser (in, I think, The General Danced at Dawn) wrote of the fitba’ players of his fictional Highland regiment playing, in their imaginations, for Rangers or Celtic, according to religion. “All except Daft Bob Brown, the battalion idiot; in his imagination he was playing for Partick Thistle.”
G’aun Hibs.
Never underestimate the effect of GOOD popular art:
http://twitter.com/AngryExile/status/612573801017020421
[i]I offer a balm for the eyes[i]
At last, something that CAN actually be classed as art, and by an artist I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of. Much appreciated, thank you.
‘George Macdonald Fraser (in, I think, The General Danced at Dawn) wrote of the fitba’ players of his fictional Highland regiment playing, in their imaginations, for Rangers or Celtic, according to religion. “All except Daft Bob Brown, the battalion idiot; in his imagination he was playing for Partick Thistle.”‘
He does indeed. It may be quoted in the short story ‘Play Up, Play Up and Get Tore In’, in which the Battalion football team (managed by Lt Dand McNeill – Fraser’s alter ego) do a tour around the British military establishments of the Mediterranean in the immediate aftermath of WWII (McNeill’s battalion of Highlanders (modeled on the Gordons) are stationed in Libya).
The footie team is shipped around the Med by a rather crooked (and I’ll admit Welsh) RN officer who passes them off as his own crew, and bets his ship’s safe on the proceeds. He almost fucks up when he accidentally gets the Jocks to play the Andrew’s own football squad, but the Scots soldiers pull off a miracle victory. In any case, and thanks to the inadvertent intervention of Pte McAuslan, Lt Samuels is unable to make his profit.
The short stories (along with ‘McAuslan in the Rough’ and ‘The Sheikh and the Dustbin’) are well worth reading. And in case anyone finds them implausible, I can safely say that over sixty years after they were written I encountered soldiers like Pte McAuslan.
Jonathan Jones – who sneered at the poppy exhibit at the Tower of London – would no doubt turn his nose up at Fraser’s short stories. Which is all the more reason for you all to read them.