Web Development by Alistair Robinson

Two Horizons is the name of an exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art that I went to recently, but my topicality is lacking again because I notice it has just ended. No matter: I went so that you don’t have to, and I’m eager to share my thoughts – but that’s probably only because it gives me the chance to have a rant about conceptual art.

Taken from a private collection of fairly new art, it was a mixed bunch. I enjoyed a few of the pieces (but, let’s face it, good reviews are boring, so feel free to skip a few paragraphs.) Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s Man Looking out of a Window and Arch together were fascinating. The arch, really half an arch, made of heavy laquered wood, was almost the full height of the room, and was propped against the wall in the corner by a window. In the adjacent black and white photograph, Man Looking out of a Window, which also took up most of the height of the room, the titular man stands under the very same arch. This simple device, including an object from the picture in the exhibition space itself, was surprisingly interesting and almost disorientating, in a way that reminded me of the visual games of Magritte. The sheer physicality of the huge arch, in itself an attractive object, made the photograph come alive and prompted me to take on the identity of the man, who was gazing outside oblivious to the arch looming over him.

There was a sculpture made from sheets of glass by Kitty Kraus, all flat intersecting planes and sharp angles. It appealed to me in the same way that Toby Paterson‘s work does: the way it recalls both the beauty and the ugliness of everyday modernist architecture, which – by way of multi-storey car parks, pedestrian precincts, social housing and schools – became just as much a part of me as I grew up as the mossy rocks, fast-flowing streams, conifer plantations and moors of the North Ayrshire countryside.

I was very drawn to the tiny cardboard models of Manfred Pernice, but I wonder if it wasn’t their cuteness that appealed to me (cuteness and kitsch have been on my mind lately, so I’ve been guarding against their dubious attractions.) But I think it takes more than dinkiness to make something cute in the way that I mean here – the bad way that appeals to one’s base sentimental responses.

There were some other quite attractive and interesting works, including paintings and other sculptures, but what I really want to write about is the bananas. The first thing I noticed on entering the room was the smell of over-ripe bananas, and then I saw them: on a window sill, a bunch of them, quite blackened but definitely just a bunch of bananas. I didn’t have a handout guide, so at this point I didn’t know what anything was or who it was by. A young couple examining them, obviously also lacking the means to identify the works, were prompted by mirth and puzzlement to ask the staff whether they were part of the exhibition or not.

This situation is interesting in itself. Without the description supplied by the gallery’s handout (which I soon obtained) the work is not complete. It turned out to be listed as “Untitled, Bananas, urine (injected),” by Andreas Slominski. The artist wanted us to know that the bananas, apparently just normal bananas, were in fact full of urine. So part of this work is the gallery’s description of it, of the form “[title], [media],” and, following that, the question whether or not urine really has been injected into them.

The artist is playing a game, but it’s much more boring than the games of Magritte. His paintings explore philosophical questions about representation and perception. The bananas seem to me tricksy and facile. Where Magritte’s games were about human nature, Slominsky’s bananas are about the practice of showing things in a gallery. They are a work of nihilism, sabotaging their place in the exhibition by questioning our decision to go there in the first place. I suppose that it’s an intellectual game, but to me it’s not a very interesting one, and it does give me the feeling that I have been treated with contempt by the artist. I might even say that these bananas left a really nasty taste in my mouth.

The other important characteristic of this work, which it has in common with all conceptual art, is that the artist didn’t make it himself. He had a concept and a set of instructions for gallery staff on how to put it together. What is it about this, exactly, that I find so repugnant? Perhaps it is simply that such activities are self-evidently stupid and unartistic, and are especially insulting when they are lauded as important by the art establishment.

I didn’t intend here to embark on a general critique of conceptual art, but I will say this. It might be objected that every generation of artists faces hostile critics, that there have always been grumpy old men screaming “you call that art?” But I think there is a big difference between those who were indifferent or hostile to Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso and so on; and those of us who attack conceptual art. And that is because there is, objectively, a big difference in the art. Conceptual art says “what is art?” All other art says “this is art.”

UPDATE: According to Tim Cornwell in the Scotsman, the bunch of bananas is worth £15,000. You may, like me, wonder who would pay for a bunch of bananas that needs to be replaced and injected with urine every time they go bad, but apparently the value lies in the artist’s certificate.

Tags: andreas, art, bananas, conceptual, gallery, injected, modern, slominski, urine
Posted in aesthetics, art and architecture, culture, edinburgh | 8 Comments »