AND............ what are "you" trying to say? martin mitchell.
On 8 Jan 2010, at 22:13, Rob Myers wrote: > On 08/01/10 21:40, martin mitchell wrote: >> >> Instead of pointing finger and making unfounded accusations it would be >> educational, if you could make constructive comments about my reply. >> > What kind of critical authority is unable to make a distinction between > self-regarding and self-critical? What is worse is that he is blind to the > possibility that the ideals of engagement and social effect are often the > journalistic or administrative sentiments of art world redemptiveness. > Career-building bullshit that cares. > > In writing approvingly of ‘other artists [who] got on concentrating and > developing the potential of art and society within a constantly changing set > of socio-economic circumstances’, Gillick joins a long succession of > adolescents, young and old. His mistake is to think that an idealised world > constituted by and in the fraction of the art world in which he participates > professionally (and boy we mean professionally) is indeed a robust reality. > This ‘wor1d’ is a chimera whose function is to tell him that he is indeed > ‘engaged’ – or something. This is the idealisation – we might call it > solipsism – which we and anyone who takes on a project of realism will seek > to avoid (even if that realism is more often striven for than achieved). The > first thing is to try and liberate oneself from various institutional > determinations and from certain illusions concerning the power of art > robustly to engage with and even recognise ‘the world’. And insofar as we are > liberated from these illusions, we are bound to locate our practice in > relation to a material tradition in whose ruination we have tried hard to be > complicit. There is no abnormal melancholy in this. Loss makes for the best > approximations of necessity. > > - Art & Language, ‘Smugness’ (Letter to the editor), Artmonthly, > September-October, 2000, p. 18. > > Art & Language have maintained a high level of scepticism about the politics > of virtue that has dominated art theory, and much art practice, since the > waning of Conceptualism. Theirs is a practice built upon refusing the > consolations that much of the academic left have found refuge in during a > period of political reaction, whether Althusserian ‘theoretical practice’ or > subsequent discourse theories. Since the mid 1970s, many artists and > intellectuals have seen their specialist ‘intervention’ in representation or > culture as the decisive factor in the project for social change. In the end, > such approaches to ‘art and politics’ boil down to the idea that if you write > enough books, or paint enough pictures, capitalism (or patriarchy, or > colonialism, or... ) will collapse under their weight. Galleries, publishing > houses and bureaucratically assessed projects seem to have benefited more > from this output than have the oppressed and the exploited. > - Steve Edwards, ‘Art & Language’s Doubt’ in Art & Language in Practice, Vol. > 2, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 1999, pp. 249-255 (p. 254). > > The mediocrity and corruption of the English art world, its absurdity, > selfdeception, ersatz thinking and intellectual cowardice are in part due to > the enormous number of individuals within it who are doing one thing while in > fact ‘thinking’ they are doing another. > > Britain is full of teachers pretending to be ‘artists’, ‘Artists’ pretending > to be French Philosophers, curators pretending to be revolutionaries, etc., > etc. Now bourgeois art teachers pretend they are socialist artists – feeble > work gets a righteous theme and is churned out monotonously by dullards. It > is the same recurring problem: the historical conditions they are really in > are ignored in favour of the historical conditions they want, need, believe, > feel intimidated into supporting, feel as though they ought to be in. > Recently there has been a crop of offensive volunteers to be experts, who > will enable the people to appreciate lefty’s art. That such obvious agents of > bourgeois legitimation should be able to get away with this is evidence of > how easy it is to intimidate the British with art and of how bogus the > English art world is. > > - Art & Language, ‘Art for Society?’ Art-Language, Vol. 4 No. 4, June, 1980, > pp. 1-23. > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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