Right now, I'm intrigued by the latest post about British ceramicist and Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry and the issue of "the rise of the conceptual" in contemporary art. So intrigued that I couldn't help but comment on it and desperately want to know what other people think.
Has the rise of the ‘conceptual’ in art been at the expense of craftsmanship? And is it about time contemporary art turns away from it’s obsession with the ‘idea’ - which is, in many contemporary instances, simply an excuse for mediocre art - and back toward craftsmanship?
Maybe I've just been indoctrinated by UBC and their love-in for all things photographic and conceptual or post-conceptual, but I'm okay with more idea than craft in most of my art. I think, for instance, that Micah Lexier totally knows what he's doing and is way smarter than I'll ever be, but I still find his work aesthetically pleasing and engaging. In particular, I think his project with the community at the Sheppard and Leslie subway station is kind of great: it's representative of his interests and practice, involved the neighbourhood in a tangible way and made a god-awful subway station look a little bit nicer.
Micah Lexier, Ampersand, 2002,photo: Gary Tsang (http://www.pbase.com/akide/image/9064040)
I'm also okay with artists that don't make their own pieces - that effectively remove themselves from the part of the project where the concept becomes the craft - like Damien Hirst (I have other issues with his work, but that's another post entirely) or Matthew Barney or Maurizio Cattalan. It's enough for me that they came up with an idea and found the best way to execute it, even if that wasn't through their own handiwork.
And I have concerns about championing craftsmanship over the "idea" when it comes to performance and video art. It's nearly impossible to evaluate the craftsmanship in either of these practices and they both rely pretty heavily on a solid concept or idea as a back bone. If an artist creates an aesthetically messy or unrealistic performance, does that mean they are poor craftspeople? In video art, "bad art" or poorly rendered visual effects have become their own aesthetic strategies, used to convey ideas about technology, mimesis and the problematic relationship of the human body to representation and media.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for good craftsmanship, when possible and appropriate, and often find myself drawn to the crazy artists of the world who do things with their own two hands, painstakingly taking up and mastering (or not) a craft. Shary Boyle's projections and delicately-draped porcelain women, Kristan Horton's replicas of objects and movie stills, Brian Jungen's patio furniture whale skeletons, Fastwürms insane room-sized installations... these are all works I love for their direct involvement with the materials, but also because they're dealing with a whole host of interesting and timely concepts that fascinate me and make me have a stake in the success of the work.
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It's a good topic. My intuition tells me that craft vs. concept is a false dichotomy. I think it's very telling that Grayson Perry uses the term "stage set" perjoratively. Nobody likes theatrics that ring false or overblown. But staging is one of the things that distinguishes art from other kinds of experience. In art experience, we are on some level self-conscious, aware of our own processes of evaluation and experience, be they sensory or cognitive. Conceptual art may direct our attention more heavily toward cognition than other types of work, but it would be impossible to do this without also addressing the senses in some way. Taste comes into as well. Some people like to have their cognitive faculties teased, some like to have their emotions tweaked, some like a phenomenological experience, some like to follow a narrative. And sometimes we may be in the mood for one or another, and some artworks may set up one or another kind of stage. When an artwork flounders and feels false, it is when the staging makes a premise that work does not satisfy. This kind of disappointment is not specific to any genre.
ReplyDelete-Sally
That's a good point, Sally. I often launch into these things without thinking through whether or not the dichotomy has any leg to stand on in the first place and end up perpetuating it by accident...
ReplyDeleteI think what it's more about, for me, is the difference or process between the concept and the execution - which is what you're saying as well, I think. It's not work that is obsessed with the concept that is the problem, so much as work that claims to be addressing a particular concept when, in fact, its execution does no such thing.
Good point Sally and thanks for raising the issue, Gabby. I feel like I used to care not a whit for craft, and now I really enjoy when someone working with craft uses it smartly; after all, traditional and industrial craft objects are such a part of our daily lives, so when done well a craft-oriented project can really resonate on a deep level, I find. Or it did most recently when I found a few faves in the Gardiner's Object Factory show, on now. I agree that it's best though, as Sally implies, to judge each work, conceptual end of the spectrum or craft end of the spectrum or both, on its own merits.
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