Contemporary Cultures of Display

This final course book brings the course full circle, as it interconnects with issues addressed by the other five course books and related reader material, such as the canon, the status of the artist, the art/craft distinction, 'ethnic' art and gender.  This part of the course examines the social, political and economic factors behind the display of art. Decisions about art gallery acquisitions and loans for permanent or temporary exhibition are made by people generally unknown to most of the public. Responses to and by the public are as varied as the term 'the public' is impossible to identify as a homogeneous block. Those in positions of influence in bringing the arts into the public domain have always claimed to be acting in the public interest for the public good, yet these acts have often attracted criticism. In today's political climate inclusiveness and accessibility of the arts to as many people as possible are the declared goals of the people in power, yet they are criticised by many as 'dumbing down' and more interested in financial returns. On the one hand, these critics are accused of elitism.

David Batchelor (Art and its Histories, ed S.Edwards, Yale University, 1999) says 'the public' does not exist. 'Like the man-in -the-street or silent majority, it is a self-justifying fantasy of politicians, civil servants, administrators and journalists. It is a mythical creature with invisible interests...' Not just politicians, I would add, because 'the man-in-the-street' also fantasises, or the'woman-in-the-audience' who I heard shouting out 'we don't agree with you; we didn't elect you...' (whoever the politician was she was addressing on BBC Question Time) as she claimed to be speaking on everyone else's behalf. Also I heard a reporter asking protesters on a Trades Union march what they thought the public would make of the strike. 'We are the public!' came the response.

Consumers, investors, indebted borrowers, stakeholders, spenders, savers, tax payers, employees, citizens, customers, patients, passengers, pedestrians, motorists, the masses, the general populace. Etc. (In Latin: Idiota = Man-in-the street).

The spectacular display of art like the spectacular display of kind is necessarily on a large scale, 'blockbusters' designed to stimulate and entertain the spectating public. It is therefore costly and must be justified by providing value for money. Guy Debord, the central figure in the Situationist International in the sixties, criticised spectacle for its false unification of an inherently divided society. Also thematic displays, both temporary and permanent and whether the exhibitions are of individual artists' work or collective displays, have been setting the trend for several years now. Themes pick out features or aspects of subject matter that unite works of art in some way, that may go beyond national or chronological boundaries for example: Time, Colour, Running, Hair, Laughter, Shoes, Blood, Eroticism. There is a temptation to sensationalise such exhibitions both in the kind of advance publicity circulated and the displays themselves.

'Don't make a spectacle of yourself' is the kind of advice that may be offered by a parent (of the non-pushy sort), but in this new celebrity era a virtue is made of such behaviour. Certain recent events have shown that it is now often the wretched and vulnerable who are being made spectacles of as objects or victims of the jeering, mocking and bullying groups and gangs that set fire to tramps, take photographs of 'happy slappy' victims or, as happened in Derby on October 6th in 2008, egg on a young man intent on committing suicide, in scenes reminiscent of public execution spectacles. Jean Baudrillard, the French philosopher spoke of the proliferation of images (before the ubiquity of the camera - cell phone) that makes it impossible to 'sustain belief in the existence of an underlying social reality.'

In 2007 A216 students were asked to discuss the claim that there is no fundamental difference between art museums and amusement parks. It's a widely discussed subject in cultural circles and Billy Childish, who is a former love partner of Tracey Emin and a founding member of the Stuckists, has said that 'turning the gallery into an amusement park is not a victory for art but a victory for amusement parks. Popularising a trip to the gallery by turning (it) into the scene of a car accident...is a victory for base and morbid curiosity.' (NC Brighton July 2007)

So this final part of the course is concerned with political and socio-economic issues connected to the experience of art shows, as it raises questions and requires debate as to whether or not art shows should be for enjoyment or education, and whether there's that danger of 'dumbing down' with the former or elitist with the latter.

The box-office appeal of the heroic avant-garde in the form of the (most prominent) Impressionists has also attracted TV productions keen to be popular and cost effective (the money-Monet connection) by providing an easy lesson in an exciting way. The idio-syncratic Waldemar Januszczak begins his BBC2 series 'The Impressionists' (summer, 2011) by saying the Impressionists are 'terribly popular, terribly familiar, terribly commercialised' before proceeding to make them even more so. One critic complained of the time Januszczak spent explaining how it was that Monet managed to paint his very tall canvases. 'Come on!' she said; 'It's going to be a ladder or a trench, isn't it?!'

Christoph Grunenberg (in case study 2) described the display of works of art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in the 1930s as commodities in a department store, thereby confirming Walter Benjamin's dictum: " The concentration of works of art...approximates them to commodities which, where they offer themselves in masses to the passer-by, rouse the idea that he must also receive a share.

Julian Stallabrass (Art Incorporated, Oxford University Press, 2004) explores the relation between art and consumerism in the 21st century well into the post-modern era. He discusses the Shopping exhibition at Tate Liverpool where the artist Guillaume Bijl opened a shop which was maintained by Tesco staff who rearranged and price tagged the goods and stacked shelves, discomfitting 'viewers' who could not behave in a way that might have seemed natural to them i.e. by actually purchasing the goods on show. In the context of emerging Chinese artists into the post-modern global art world, Stallabrass goes on to mention Wan Jin's 'ice wall' exhibited in Zengzhen in 1996 when the public destroyed the art as they took to digging out the luxury consumer items contained within.

The report in The Economist ((November 28th, 2010) by Sarah Thornton and Fiammetta Rocco mentioned in block 2 goes into some detail on the art market during the current 2009 > recession during which sales are down by about 40% on their peak in 2007-8 (when for example Damien Hirst's "Beautiful Inside My Heart Forever" 'event' sold 56 works for £70 million and a triptych by Francis Bacon went for $86.3 million), but experts told the report that the biggest problem is not lack of demand but lack of good work to sell. The 3 Ds - death, debt & divorce still deliver works of art to the market. The report goes on to discuss changes in the art market whereby last year China overtook France as the world's third biggest art market after the USA and Britain. Big buyers from Russia, India, China and the Middle East have become more prominent. On October 16th 2009, Fatima Maleki, a London based Iranian, bought a painting that had appeared at the 2003 Venice Biennale, by Chris Offili who is British but of Nigerian origin and now living in Trinidad. It couldn't be more global than that!

Whereas 20 years ago most sales were to dealers and thence to private collectors in auction houses such as Sothebys (a quoted company) and Christies (now private)*, the dealers have now taken to matching sellers to buyers for a commission. The report goes on to explain that contemporary art is bought in two main ways: The primary market offers work from artists' studios and is often displayed in carefully curated gallery shows. The secondary market involves the resale of art, either through private dealers or via auction houses. Primary collectors can become integral to an artist's career and have the privilege of first choice. If they subsequently 'flip' work at auction they may have their privileges withdrawn and find themselves excluded. Primary collectors are more risk takers than bargain hunters and often shop around in places such as prestigious art fairs. Artists often resent secondary collectors who may sell their work at auction for large profits with little benefit to the artist.

The report offers an explanation for the success of artists in achieving fame and fortune. To begin it is by attracting attention and by establishing a peer group and contact network early on - at art school. After graduation the first hurdle is to find a good dealer with a gallery. Emerging galleries often need the approval of important art fairs in order to be taken seriously. Dealers take care in 'placing' works; the ideal kind of buyer is a public museum or private foundation.

*(Both Sothebys and Christies were mired in scandal 10 years ago for jointly conspiring to fix commissions. Since then they have both expanded eastwards, concentrated more on advising collectors and also embraced on-line technology for previews and bidding. Their response to the current slump has been to squeeze salaries and expenses, cut staff and to stop producing those glossy auction catalogues.)

A new price record in the international art market was set on May 4th, 2010, at Christies in New York with the sale Picasso's depiction of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Nude, Green Leaves & Bust, for $106 million (£70 million).

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ART MUSEUM UPDATES

Peter Campbell, writing in the London Book Review, June 2006, about the new Tate Modern hang, brings in the ecclesiastical metaphor familiar to students of the course and also those who have read John Berger's Ways of Seeing. He talks favourably of chattering schoolchildren and the quietly contemplative in the mixture of visitors, even if there is no art gallery equivalent of the church notice 'service in progress' to separate them. It reminds me of cathedrals that attract tourists who can wander around while at the same time the regular congregation participate in the service.

The initial Tate Modern rotating 'permanent' collection was divided into four parts approximately equivalent to 17th century canonical genre categories of History, Portraiture, Ordinary Life (genre), Landscape and Still Life. These were History/Memory/Society; The Body; Matter/Environment; Real Life Object. Now the collection is divided into States of Flux; Energy and Process; Poetry and Dream; Elements of Chance.

Carol Duncan talks about 'sacralised museum spaces' in Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums, 1995. Museum architecture is as varied as that of buildings made for religious worship and devotion, from classical temples, medieval cathedrals to conteporary evangelical stadiums. Enormous and splendid art museums have as much in common with these as enormous and splendid city banks.

In the year 2000, since the course was written, The Louvre finished an extension for holding items emanating from Africa, Asia, Pacific islands and South America. Writing in The Times, the journalist Jon Henley said the museum was criticised by UNESCO for receiving many of these items without the respective governments' consent. President Chirac responded by saying that "it would unfair to keep civilisations out of the world's biggest museum", adding that "those countries should be proud that they were recognised as worthy of The Louvre." Nevertheless, he vowed to make the return of such items a priority.

In April, 2006, an article in The Guardian revealed Jacques Chirac's imminent plan unveil his legacy to the nation, following the French presidential tradition. The estimated €260m museum on Paris's left Bank intended to house 300,000 african and Asian artefacts brought to France over the centuries is being criticised for setting about rehashing colonial clichés. The building is to be hidden in a landscaped jungle, enabling visitors to 'discover' it and the artefacts within, rather like those colonial explorers of the'Dark Continent' who 'brought' these objects in the first place I suppose.

A more recent row involving the Louvre and its foreign acquisitions ended in October, 2009, when it was agreed that its collection of fresco fragments from Luxor in Egypt be handed back. Perhaps the tide has turned with regard to disputed ownership of non-European artefactsby by European museums.

Following its opening in the summer of 2006, Jeremy Harding, in the London Book Review, vol 29, no 1, describes the permanent collection as being 'steeped in a significant dimness'. He also adds, in an attempt to be fair, that 'when France extends the courtesy of identity to other cultures it is rebuffed as a condescending assimilationist ogre...(and) when it grits its teeth and prepares to celebrate "difference", it is accused of exoticism or thought to be in the grip of a cultural hallucination brought on by the return to jungle fever.'

Demands for the return of 'looted' property have also been made to The British Museum, such as an Ethiopian Coptic reredos and most famously the Parthenon (aka Elgin) marbles. In June (2009) a row has erupted over the British Museum's anticipated 'loan' of the marbles to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens. The British Museum Director, Hannah Boulton, has said that the loan can go ahead only as long as the Museum's ownership is acknowledged. Greek Minister of Culture says that would legitimise 'the theft' of the marbles 207 years ago.

Further to the case study (7) in this course book on the recent schemes to generate income and cultural involvement in urban environments outside London, David Ward reports in The Guardian (8/2/03) that three times more money (£100 million) was spent in 2002 on galleries and museums in the North-West than in London (perceived as an injustice by The Evening Standard's Brian Sewell). Exhibitions by big names such as Sir Paul McCartney at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool have apparently attracted the curious in large numbers. £35 million of the £100 million went to The Manchester Art Gallery, where visitor numbers for 2003 are expected to hit the 300,000 mark, in other words the kind of numbers that visited it in the 19th century. However, in order to achieve that level of attendance, the Gallery has provided sparkling new shops, interactive arcades, multi-lingual audio guides and "infantile cartoons accompanying many of the paintings" - but crucially, not enough art! says Laura Cumming in The Observer, 27/5/02.

A research team from Derby University set up an experimental exhibition at The National Gallery, 'Telling Time', at the end of the year 2000. Mechanisms were used to track viewers' fixation points in figurative paintings and the amount of time spent looking. It would be interesting to compare the results to the artists' intentions in capturing the viewer's attention by using formal devices. It left me with many questions but I haven't been able to find answers yet (still waiting 24/5/10).

The Guggenheim in New York offers a not too tiring spiral journey through its collection of modern art which ends with a few paintings by Pollock and other abstract expressionists. There are some excellent works by Chagall, water-colours by Kandinsky and a surprise portrait of Countess Albazzi by Monet, amongst others. Women will be 'relieved'  to find there are toilets/rest-rooms at regular intervals. It's the men who have to queue up downstairs. A minor detail but quite important when you need to go.

Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists art group, alleged a conflict of interests at the Tate regarding acquisitions of trustees' work. 'Serota, as the director, chooses the trustees,' he said, 'and the trustees are then responsible for reappointing the director. The director then buy's the trustees' work.' (The Guardian, February, 2008).

David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool UK, presents the cases for and against the blockbuster exhibition in a conference paper (6 October, 2004) which can be seen at www.intercom.museum/conferences. A summary of his defence picks out the blockbuster's attractiveness to visitors who can see a lot in one place and at one time, consequently the number of visitors translates into ticket sales; this type of exhibition also promotes scholarship among museum staff. In prosecution he says that their grand ambitions risk being unfulfilled, give a false sense of urgency - 'must see before it's too late', lack critical comment, are related to the cult of celebrity, sponsors with ambitions outside art have too much to say, provide poor viewing because of overcrowding, continue to raise expectations that may be impossible to meet and their immediate financial success may conversely lead to less public funding.

The Gauguin 'Maker of Myth' blockbuster at Tate Modern has been much criticised for overcrowding and overpricing. An article in the Observer (Vanessa Thorpe, January 16th, 2011) talks about crowds of schoolchildren, middle-class culturati, art students and parents with baby buggies aka three-wheeled baby tanks or junior SUVs, all contesting the limited space around the paintings. Other comments from exhibition visitors complained about the steep ticket prices, being rudely shoved and cursed by fellow visitors, of people getting in the way obsessively taking photographs with i-phones. However, it wouldn't surprise me if there was someone at the Tate thinking that one way of reducing the crowds might be to raise the higher ticket prices even higher.

Charles Saumarez-Smith took over at The National Gallery a few years after this course was written, and Neil McGregor moved to The British Museum. The current (2007) director of the National is Nick Penny who has said there will be fewer blockbusters and fewer inter-gallery loans. (In 2004, AXA Art, an insurance company, organised a conference on the growing problem of art damaged in transit.) Saumarez Smith is now secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy.

Delegates at the AXA conference mentioned above spoke about the inherent risks to valuable works of art due to the vast amount of inter-gallery loans, of the increasing problem of insurance pay-outs for damages incurred by airport baggage handlers, customs officials, gallery officials, cleaners and art gallery visitors. An article by Laura Barnett (Guardian, 30/07/08) illustrates the problem with the case of a 9 ft tall sculpture by Costa Rican artist Tatiana Fernandez, which was sent crashing to the ground by a visitor at The Royal Academy's summer exhibition curated by Tracey Emin. It was a similar kind of accident to the one involving a visitor and three priceless Qing vases at the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge in 2006. The article also mentioned part of an installation by Gustav Metzger (in 2004) that was gathered up by a cleaner and thrown into a crusher. It does seem slightly ironic! The installation was entitled 'Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art.' So possibly the artist's response was like that of Marcel Duchamp when his Large Glass was broken, reconciled as he was to the role of chance and expression of destiny. Then there is Christo, famous for wrapping objects such as the Eiffel Tower and the Reichstag who had one of his pieces 'helpfully' unwrapped by customs officers.

From accidents to thefts - May 24th, 2010: The ARTINFO website shows the five paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Leger and Modigliani recently seized with apparent ease from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The thieves broke an old padlock and smashed a window. I guess the costs of high ssecurity are weighed against those of total insurance cover.

The ICA is considered by many to be the home of the British Avant Garde that has lost its cutting edge since the seventies. The director, Ekow Eshun, has explained that its purpose now is neither to be a museum nor about 'storming the barricades'. He talks about its exciting, innovative and urgent creativity in the exhibitions and talks that take place allowing an ongoing 'conversation' with the public. (David Batchelor spoke of the 'public' as a 'self-justifying fantasy of politicians, civil servants, administrators and journalists...a mythical creature with invisible interests on whose behalf people claim to speak', in his essay 'Unpopular Culture' (1995).)

More news from the ICA.org.uk was reported by Iain Aitch in the Guardian Arts (24/04/08) with the Institute's 'speed-dating' for artists event. Could it be an art event? The rules stipulate that participants must bring samples of their work ('etchings', so to speak). Power-point presentations would probably be out. The next event was due on June 13th, 2008.

'Should We Let The ICA Die?' is the title of Tim Teeman's article in the Times (28/01/10) as the on-time cutting edge arts venue finds itself in the mire. Its current deficit of £600,000 and salary bill of £2.5 million distributed amongst 60 full-time staff (I wonder how that's distributed!) is causing consternation. Jobs are on the line and 'there's a feeling of mistrust as certain jobs are being earmarked for favoured employees', says one staff member who believes they should go back to being 'academic, avant-garde, controversial and less glamourous'. I must say I thought its general direction under Ekow Eshun was in the area of controversialism, but as Matthew Collings, art critic, says, it's more in the area of 'sanctified avant-gardism' that you actually now find in many art institutions. Former director Ivan Massow has said he would love to have another go, that he would attack it like a business! Well, perhaps there's yet another way, but being an 'institute' of the arts surely blunts the cutting edge so perhaps it's time for a name change that the Arts Council England, source of half its money, would be comfortable with, or rethink the money and the salaries. However, engaging the public with art that has found new ways of countering art institutions and corporatised culture 'novelty controversialism', genuinely avant-garde, is the 'way forward' (to use that in-vogue corporate cliché). Perhaps they should just call it a day and say 'we enjoyed Fluxus, the sixties & seventies but are less keen on Eshun's gay bingo nights, so it's time to go, there's another party going on elsewhere'.

Guy Cogeval succeeded Serge Lemoine in January 2008 as the new director of Le Musée d'Orsay. He was quoted as saying "It is the Impressionists more than Racine and Poussin who remain the best ambassadors of French culture." Meaning? That's were the money is.

The new MOMA has been discussed by many cultural commentators. Linda Nochlin, quoting Foucault, finds the building expresses 'unobtrusive power'.

According to an article on the Culture 24 website (July 7, 2005) a survey of opinion (I'm supposing this to be local as opposed to visitor opinion) relating to the Tate St Ives extension proposal there was a 50/50 split as it to whether itshould go ahead. According to the website concerns were expressed about the possible loss of local parking space and the harmonisation of the proposed extension with the landscape.

In July, 2010 it has emerged that the plot of land for the St Ives extension has been bought for £1.5 m by Cornwall County Council, who are in partnership with the Tate, from a local housing association. The housing association has pledged to use the money to build more homes for the elderly.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford reopened in July, 2010, with 39 new galleries allowing much more space for exhibitions. It is a reworked interior for providing a 'museum experience'; the layout shows visual connections between the galleries by the use of split levels, irregularly placed windows for viewing the different cultures across time lines and corridor bridges (making cultural bridges). The ideas behind the new architecture possibly risks clashing with any future change in display strategy caused by new academic trends or archaeological discoveries.

Jean Baudrillard died on March 6th, 2007

In May 2011 the new Turner Contemporary in Margate opened, creating an artistic link between J.M.W. Turner who painted in Margate and Tracey Emin, yBa and enthusiastic cultural representative of this her home town. Edward Vaizey, Tory Minister for Culture, Media and Sport (is that the right order?) said that the Turner would be a place to hang out, a resource for skills, education and outreach work.

The new Hepworth Wakefield also opened in May 2011.

The new dependency of prominent national art galleries in Britain on funds from big oil companies such as BP to make up for the reduction in government funding is defended e.g. by Nicholas Serota on the grounds that it is unavoidable due to economic realities, and that anyway their involvement will have no influence or effect on content. Big Oil is in a win-win situation; their 'philanthropic' strategy allows them to both avoid taxes and gain kudos for charity in the process. But if instead we had those taxes then we could use that money and we wouldn't need the 'generosity' of the oil corporations. (December, 2011)

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OTHER FORMS OF DISPLAY

There are a number of sculpture parks around, such as Grisedale Forest in Yorkshire. In West Sussex there is a really good treat at Goodwood. Their connected website is at http://www.sculpture.org.uk/

In France there is Niki de Sainte Phalle's sculpture garden for example; there are also many places around Europe and the rest of the world of course that feature outdoor sculptures and various creations with or without state or private maintenance, some of them categorised as curiosities or eccentricities. In France there are the cliffs at Rotheneuf near St Malo with the carved caricatures done by the Abbé Fouré. Also the village d'art préludien, Achères-la-Forêt 77116 Ury and in the department of Drome, 26390 Hauterives, there is the Palais Idéal of Ferdinand (dit Le Facteur) Cheval, which was classified as an historic monument by the then Culture Minister André Malraux who championed 'Art Naif'. However such creators are not generally accepted by the critical and commercial circuit, some of them existing in a category of their own as Outsider Art, intigated by the (established and canonical) Jean Dubuffet.

The Owl House in Nieu Bethesda, South Africa, is the work of Helen Martins who began to transform her modest Karoo dwelling into a fantasy universe of several hundred figures modelled from clay and crushed glass. The overall theme is mystical derived largely from biblical mythology. In 1976, when her work seemed to have been completed she took her own life, at the age of 78, by swallowing caustic soda.

Open House displays have become an important part of the art attractions available during the Brighton May Festival. Anyone can theoretically join one of several groups in the city to exhibit and offer work for sale in his or her own home. Members of the public come to either view or buy work or else to simply snoop around to see how other people live. There is no pre-requisite standard to comply with so there is a lot of variety.

In a project undertaken by The Guardian, a few members of the public were invited to live with contemporary works of art for a week and the end of June, 2003. They were asked to respond both initially and at the end of the week. The artists were also asked to respond; most of them were positive but the Chapman bros were slightly sceptical, saying "Art belongs in galleries." Sarah Lucas concluded that "It's not not really a case of art not being made for homes - it's more the people who live in them not being made for art," adding - "which is fair enough." The report was put together by Susie Steiner (Guardian Weekend, 21/6/03).

Tim and Sue Pickering at their home near Birmingham with a 3D frozen garden photo-composition by Marc Quinn (of frozen blood and statue in Trafalgar Square fame).

There was also a report about mobile exhibitions in Nigeria three years ago on 'Woman's Hour', Radio 4, but unfortunately I'm unable to track down further information on that.

In the international world of art, not to mention finance, it's perhaps anomaly for artists to represent their respective nations as though they are athletes. Artists like other people have varying degrees of allegiance to their countries of residence, in which they may have been either born and/or brought up or adopted. More particularly they may feel a disloyalty to regimes in power. So, for some artists international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale offer a platform to comment on nationhood, nationalism and nationality rather than an opportunity to produce patriotic exhibits. Nevertheless it is a competition which awards a most prestigious prize for the 'contestants'. This issue of belonging connects to much of the material in the fifth course book, Views of Difference; especially to case study 8. I should add here that the Biennale has been criticised for favouring countries that invest large amounts of money.

The British 'representative' in 2002, Mark Wallinger, known for works such as Ecce Homo in Trafalgar Square, the Real Work of Art (the Stubbs-like horse) and the union jack in green and orange, said he tried to "let the air out of the Biennale's nationalism" with a trompe l'oeil photo-piece of the British pavilion. Adrian Searle (The Guardian, 26/6/03) gives some examples of other reactions - the Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales who closed his show in protest against the political situation in his country, as artists protesting against the Vietnam war did in the 1960s. He also mentions Hans Haacke who tore up the floor of the German pavilion ten years ago.

The political theme at the Venice Biennale came around again in 2011. The community of nations represented (those who are invited) have pavilions in the Giardini Park and in various parts of the city. The exhibits are installations unlikely to have a role in leading towards political change anywhere, with no threat to international security, no risk of doors being battered in, exhibits destroyed and artists arrested on site of course, but disagreement and dissent within participating countries is not unknown. In 2011 this led to the last minute withdrawal of the Lebanese artists because of internal disputes over representativeness in a country of multiple 'community' identities, factions and affiliations. (In connection with governmental approval I should also mention the recent imprisonment of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, well known in the international art scene and also to mainstream media followers because of his 2008 Beijing Olympic Stadium design and the Tate Modern ceramic sunflower seeds health and safety controversy mentioned below. At the time of writing he is apparently awaiting trial for economic crimes which either indicates an actual crime or the ability of some regimes to regard artists as a threat and possibly China's indifference to the artist's exalted celebrity status outside). However, although the Biennale venue is one of the most prestigious for internationally aspiring artists and curators, most people outside the art world and the culture pages of broadsheets would be unaware of it. Amongst the 2011 exhibits, Poland selected Israeli-born Yael Bartana whose work imagines the return of 3.3 million Jews to Poland in a spirit of reconciliation. The Egyptian curator Shady El Noshakati made a paean to a friend killed in theTahrir Square demonstrations of January 2011. The Israeli pavilion focused on themes of separation, division and possession of natural resources.

Over the last few years redundant churches in the UK have been turned into artists' studios and exhibition spaces. However, active churches are also engaging in art, hence the exhibition at St. Paul's Cathedral in July, 2005. This offers a reverse take on the idea of museums as cathedrals of art.

Spencer Tunick is known, largely through photograpphy, for his orchestration of mass displays of nudity in public spaces.

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POPULAR REACTIONS

Letters to newspapers are often interesting. People can get very fired up, especially at Turner Prize giving time! I wonder if A216 students ever express themselves in this way. Anyway, here are some paraphrased examples:

Complaints have been made about overcrowding at exhibitions. R.Binns from London E17  said the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery in 2003 was too crowded and accused it of being more interested in making money than in facilitating art appreciation, citing the price of tickets, audio gides, the 'racket' of pre-booking and too much mention of Barclays Bank, the sponsors. D.S.Jones from Havant said that overcrowding was a problem at The Royal Academy, particularly the parties of noisy schoolchildren. There was letter in support of The National Gallery written by T.Hardwick from Oxford who thought the removal of a Picasso still-life to The Tate offers the chance to see Picasso's work together, even if one can no longer compare him with Uccello at the National.

Further comment on museum charges was made by M.Mockford from Stoke-on-Trent who suggested following the Russian example whereby tourists pay the full whack, nationals a tenth of that, and locals get free admission.

Nicholas Serota was on the receiving end for not distinguishing between art which has "the power to excite and enthuse people and mere sensationalism" in attracting visitors. "People slow down and gawp at road accidents" the correspondant continued, "it doesn't make them art." Another letter said Serota had a nerve referring to local enthusiasm for Gormley's Angel of the North. "Why does he think we refer to this thing that looks like a rusty aeroplane nose-diving into the hillside as 'the Gateshead Flasher'?"

On BBC Radio 4 (2/6/05) Nicholas Serota defended this year's Turner Art Prize, saying the art "provides opportunities for looking at ourselves more deeply than otherwise." But should it not pull us out of ourselves so we can perceive the world differently? - A debating point!

Another example of a failed dialogue between art and the public is the pillar Noisegate installed at Hull Marina. Persons unknown crowned it with a lavatory pan and a ready-for-action sex doll at one point.

Another letter recounted a story in which he referred to the claim by the artist Michael Craig-Martin that he had transformed a glass of water on a glass shelf into his Oak Tree. In 1976, the story goes, the crate labelled 'oak tree' was impounded by the Australian authorities because importing plants was illegal. The artist was compelled to deny the 'miraculous' claim.

A more recent problem connected to crossing frontiers has arisen over Damien Hirst's Mother and Child Divided (the cow & calf bisected) which ran into an obstacle (9/4/08) on its way to the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, because of of Japan's ban on British beef. It eventually cleared customs when it was understood that the pickled meat was not for eating. It was then noticed that the carcasses were beginning to rot so new formaldehyde was added, leading to (health and safety) fears that the fumes could poison staff, so a special ventilation system had to be installed.

Australian art critic Robert Hughes spoke on TV ('Mona Lisa Curse') of the surge in prices of art putting museums out of the game. He said they have been transformed into brands, competing in the commercial world with commodified art presented as spectacle disconnected from context and whose meaning is lost for a world hungry for celebrity, market culture and entertainment (this in the same month, September 2008 that Damien Hirst has put some of his work up for auction - £100,000,000 the lot). Hughes laments the demise of the Pop artists like Rauschenberg and Rosenquist whose work actually told us something about the world (unlike Warhol's which didn't, he said). But the contemporary world of exploding information (and imploded meaning) and without a sense of value, said someone gifted in turning phrases, is perhaps best served by art that reflects it.

David Batchelor made an important point, in relation to the claims that are made by curators amongst others who claim to be acting in concert with popular demand, in his piece 'Unpopular Culture', 1995, by saying that the public, as such, doesn't exist; 'like the-silent-minority, people-in-general, man-in-the-street it's a mythical creature with invisible interests on whose behalf people claim to speak so as to disguise the self-interest of their decisions'. Of course we or they have multiple roles and states of mind or body, permanent or temporary - as men, women, old, young, wealthy, poor, consumers, investors, savers, car users, pedestrians, tax payers, engaged, indifferent etc etc.

Following the British government coalition arranged between the conservatives and liberals due to the failure of either of the main parties to win outright, comments such as 'this is what the public (electorate) voted for' are plainly incorrect as it was certainly not an option on ballot papers, yet this goes unchallenged.

BOOKS

In his book Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums, Oxford University Press, 1991, Philip Fisher makes the point that the modernist art museum defined objects in terms of their uniqueness and authenticity (p 31 of the course book for this section). That reminds me of the Platonic view that a bed (as made by a carpenter) was superior to a work of representational art (in the 5th century BCE of course) because of the primacy of the new and original over the imitative.

Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World, Norton Press, 2009

Not directly related to the course, Arthur C Danto's The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Harvard, 1981, nevertheless is very interesting for its focus on such questions as 'how do banal objects become transfigured into works of art'.

PERIODICALS etc

The Art Newspaper has sections on museums, exhibitions, auctions, copyright issues and other controversies. It can be obtained on-line but there is a subscription fee.

INTERESTING WEBSITES:

www.mutualart.com also has information on events, auction results, news and articles on world of art.

www. spoonfed.co.uk for on-line enthusiasts lists 'what's on' in London with critics' views.

www.artistsandmakers is a busy website with news and reviews. It is currently encouraging the use of empty spaces e.g. disused shops for artists to exhibit.

I can't help thinking that DO NOT TOUCH notices at sculpture exhibitions deprive people who are visually impaired or completely blind, or indeed even those who are not, of an aesthetic haptic experience, which seems out of step with policies of inclusiveness and accessibility. What's the answer?

I saw an exhibition in Bloomfontein, South Africa, in January 2010, which included a work consisting of several metal plates with braille writing embossed on each one. I was curious to know what was written down; although even if I had been allowed to touch I would not have understood. If your vision was quite severely impaired then you would need to be alerted to the fact that there was indeed something written on the metal plates. Perhaps they contained the message 'not to touch' or 'do touch' or 'aren't the Bombay Bicycles good'. Well clearly it could have been anything!

Another miscellaneous point - has anyone come across warnings to visitors at certain exhibitions that they may find some of the objects offensive or disturbing? - just as you get on TV before programmes with the same displeasing potential. People might find some of Orazio Gentilleschi's paintings from the 16th -17th centuries, and so on and so on.

February 14th,2008. London Underground thought commuters would be offended by this poster advertising the Cranach exhibition at the Royal Academy. Insincere apologies therefore if anyone is offended by this:

Fortunately it seems that someone eventually saw sense and revised the decision.

About one month after Ai Wei Wei's vast bed of ceramic sunflower seeds installation at Tate Modern was restricted to viewing only due to fears that direct contact with the ceramic seeds might be a health and safety risk (with costly insurance implications) the artist was placed under house arrest on November 5, 2010, by the Chinse government. He is a prominent public figure in China who was a key designer of the 'bird's nest' olympic stadium and also a vocal critic of the government.

On the subject of the nude (in contemporary art) there has been an irresistable temptation for art galleries to provide our prurient society with what it enjoys most - sex. Leaving aside the debate about whether or not some of more controversial exhibits of recent times qualify as art and if so whether or not they are good or bad - a decision which has increasingly been made by the Metropolitan Police Obscene Publications Unit anyway (MPOBU), sex sells tickets and helps to balance the books. The Tate Modern exhibition 'Pop Life: Art in a Material World' (October 2009) has been criticised by various critics who have accused the Tate of apparently promoting the measurement of art world success by the prices achieved and gossip-column inches secured.

This latest controversy arose from theTate's removal of a photograph of a pre-pubescent Brooke Shields by Richard Prince, after pressure by the MPOBU. The original photograph of Shields was taken by Gary Cross in 1978 to promote the Lois Malle film 'Pretty Baby' and then shown in Photo Magazine with the contractual approval of Shields' mother, but use of the photograph was later challenged by Shields herself. Cross was duly taken to court but won the case, making himself bankrupt in the process. As the photograph removed from Tate Modern is actually a photo of a photo I wonder whether Cross gave permission to Prince to exhibit it. I wonder who now 'owns' the image.

The Tate initially defended itself decision to include the Brooke Shields photograph by pointing out that Prince is an important artist who critically investigates the power of the photographic image in society. It seems incontestible that photos, particularly of this kind, do indeed have a powerful effect. As for Prince's importance - what does importance mean? And how important is Gary Cross and does the well known and once even better known identity of the ten-year old subject (or is it sex object?) have a bearing on the debate?

SOME OTHER ARTISTS TO LOOK AT

Michael Asher, Gordon Matta-Clark, Joan Fontcuberta