Thursday 30 April 2009
Wednesday 29 April 2009
Tuesday 28 April 2009
PAGE 2. BRANDORA'S BOX
There was a time when BRANDS were non- intrusive guides to quality and reliability, you know, when corner shops ruled the high street and the most common form of personal transport was on two legs or two wheels, but that was long before America reached out to the world and created the modern phenomenon of the GLOBALIZED MULTINATIONAL BRAND, and now, for the most part, BRANDS are just cover for peddling MONEY-SPINNING JUNK from hamburgers to automobiles.
They spend BILLIONS telling society how wholesome their hamburger are or how their cars will set us free, and still we know the HAMBURGERS will CLOG-UP OUR ARTERIES , and the cars WONT SET US FREE, but MAKE US PRISONERS OF CONVENIENCE.
And yet we continue to buy into the brands, mostly because retailers limit our choice by only stocking the most promoted brands, which are, in the main, multinationals.
There is a basic truth the multinationals should understand, and probably do …in spades, ‘YOU CAN PUT LIPSTICK ON A PIG, BUT IT’S STILL A PIG’.
The LIPSTICK is the huge investments behind the BRANDS, and the PIG is the JUNK PRODUCT.
Modern technology delivered the coup de gras when it openned PANDOR'S BOX for BRANDS, releasing every form of marketing monster to attack our minds from every angle,on every second of every day,spinning us into a world where we cease to know what is real and what isn't .
And you maybe wondering what the cold-blooded world of BRANDS and MARKETING have to do with the ETHEREAL world of art, well it has absolutely everything to do with art.
The true intrinsic value of art, and so called art, on the modern art market has always been distorted by Multinational branding, but never more so than today, as meaningless blobs and squiggles exchange hands around the world for obscene amounts of money since the advent of the Turner Prize, a Prize which this writer intends to take issue with.
‘YOU CAN PUT LIPSTICK ON A PIG,BUT IT’S STILL A PIG’, a maxim which applies, in buckets, to the Turner Prize.
The PIG is the Junk art, and the LIPSTICK is Turner, surname of the great nineteenth century landscape painter, Joseph Mallard William Turner, whose name must cease being a prefix to the said Prize, and be replaced by a more appropriate name such as JUNK.
Whenever it’s found necessary to mention a certain exhibit of the aforementioned Prize, the writer will use the term ‘A PIECE OF JUNK’ or when mentioning the winner of said prize, ‘THE PIECE OF JUNK’, to avoid exposing specific exhibits to further condemnation and ridicule, which perversely enhances it’s reputation among the elite of the aforementioned Prize, and even more perversely, their monetary value.
To appreciate why Turner should be decoupled from the aforementioned Prize, a certain amount of historical evidence is required to prove William Turner would be horrified at being associated with junk art.
Perception of Turner’s greatness will not be taken into account, only the degree to which he was a dedicated LANDSCAPE PAINTING will be central to the issue.
The natural pressures of patronage persuaded many well established British water colour artists not to venture into oil painting, but instead decided to take the safe route of specializing in water colours to the near exclusion of oils. Some dabbled in oils, but not to the degree that would threaten their patronage in water colours.
But Turner was not interested in the comfortable position of standing still, despite having generous patronage as a water colour artist, Turner dedicated himself to transforming his landscape painting with the depth of oils, and quickly produced the famous ‘fishermen at sea’, also known as ‘Cholmely sea piece’ as his first masterpiece in 1803 at the age of twenty two.
Landscape painting was probably the least popular and most difficult career for an artist to follow, not least because it involved extensive travel, which in Turner’s days did not include the air- conditioned transport we’ve become accustomed to. Overland journeys were mostly by stagecoach, and sea journeys were by sailing ships; it was COLD, WET, AND WINDY, not to mention DANGEROUS. We can get a very good insight to the degree of adversity Turner experienced in pursuit of his art in an account of how G.D.Leslie saw Turner during the last years of his life: ‘HE ALWAYS HAD THE INDESCRIBABLE CHARM OF A SAILOR BOTH IN APPEARANCE AND MANNER: HIS LARGE GREY EYES WERE THOSE OF MAN LONG ACCUSTOMED TO LOOKING STRAIGHT AT THE FACE OF NATURE THROUGH FAIR AND FOUL WEATHER ALIKE’.
The abundance of evidence that proves Turner’s dedication to landscape painting isn’t matched by the patchy and contradictory evidence of his character. Turner had more than his fair share of art critics who tended to base their assessment of his character on first impression, which in ordinary cases are wildly over optimistic or unfairly negative; in Turner’s case they were possibly unfairly negative. The only account of his character, which seemed to look beyond the first impressions, was from John Ruskin who met Turner for the first time in 1840 and recorded these comments in his diary:
‘Everybody had described him to be a boorish, unintelligent, vulgar man, this I knew to be impossible. I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded gentleman: good natured evidently, bad tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the power of his mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or look.’
Clearly, this is the profile of a man who would not suffer fools gladly, and who was totally focused on the business of his art activities in every respect, with other issues being peripheral.
And no matter how long or hard anyone chooses to look at his profile, they wont find the slither of evidence that might suggest he would consider ‘JUNK ART' as a quantum leap in the artists’ perception and interpretation of the world. If landscape painters such as John Constable would turn in their grave were they to be associated with JUNK ART, then William Turner must be spinning cartwheels
Turner, just like other great landscape painters, was on a journey to put the beauty of nature on canvas for all people of good taste to see and appreciate, and it is beholden on every lover of landscape painting to continue the journey by establishing ‘THE TURNERSCAPE PRIZE’, which would be open only to the best of landscape painters, just as the ‘BOOKER PRIZE’ is open only to the best of writers. ‘THE TURNERSCAPE PRIZE’ will almost certainly not escape becoming a ‘Multinational brand’, but it would be a brand respected round the world, and not an annual joke for the media to poke fun at.
But is it too late to rescue the art-word from the abyss of silliness? HAS THE ART-WORD BEEN TURNER PRIZED TO DEATH? Well, it will be if the second step can’t be implemented, namely to remove TURNER from the PRIZE that took the name of the great landscape painter to dignify it’s JUNK art. Do we really want the next civilization, thousands of years from now, to look back on our culture to discover it was all about NICKELS AND DIMES, when WE KNEW THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING AND THE VALUE OF NOTHING.
Let’s assume common sense prevails and Turner is at last treated with respect and ‘THE TURNERSCAPE PRIZE' is established then we’ll have a PRIZE worthy of honouring the great artist’s name and returning art to the people. ‘THE JUNK ART PRIZE’ will still bask in the glow of ridicule and condemnation, but it wont be on CENTRE STAGE, and even those avarice collectors in possession of junk art will think twice about calling it ‘ THE MOST PRODIGIOUS PRIZE IN THE ART WORLD'.
But a word of warning to those expecting a RENAISSANCE OF COMMON SENSE:
Brands, especially in the art world,are more about money than almost anything else, and for that reason, it will not be easy loosening JUNK ART’S strangle hold on the name of the great landscape painter.
The trouble is, some things don’t flush as easy as others, but don’t despair, the chain will continue to be pulled, aided by generous contributions from this writer, Forensisflush.
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