Uncharted territory

To most people, the art world appears as an exclusive clique, where one cannot simply enjoy a piece of work, one must exhaustively explain why, using the longest words available; a world where one must understand what the direct expressivity of artistic material is; a world where a seemingly discarded piece of everyday junk becomes art when placed on a plinth or a gallery floor. It is not a welcoming world and one must pass stringent entrance exams to gain admittance, or else as a visitor carry the fear of possible public mockery.

This preconception of the art world is one that appears to have gathered strength over the past century as art, or at least its cutting edge, has moved steadily away from strictly representational art.

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
Oil on canvas, 1844, JMW Turner
Bequest to the National Gallery, London

Through the history of art, paintings have been almost always representational, meaning that their subjects were of something identifiable – a flower, a nude, a landscape and so on. While the more cunning artists would at times bury meanings within their paintings, for the mass of viewers it was quite clear what the painting was of.

In the nineteenth century, when artists such as Joseph Mallord William Turner and the French Impressionists stepped away from strict representation, a degree of explanation was needed to educate viewers to a whole new way of not just painting, but of looking at the world. In the twentieth century, when representational art was overtaken by non-representational art, the radical ideas of the Impressionists were advanced ever more radically. In this new and non-representational art, there was no longer a clearly defined subject and so longer explanations were required. Or perhaps the artists, curators and other full-time denizens of the art world simply felt them necessary, in order to justify themselves.

Over the course of the previous century, those explanations became longer and longer. With time, art moved on again, from the non-representational with an explanation to, more or less, simply the explanation. This two-century move from what once may have been perceived as little more than a pretty picture, to something with almost no aesthetic appeal and a long explanation, has served to turn art into an intellectual pursuit. As such, its potential mass appeal has been considerably lessened. This may be why the popularity of artists such as Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh continues, since arguably they were among the last cutting edge artists to paint more or less representationally.

My bed
Mattress, pillows, linens, objcets
© 1998 Tracey Emin / Saatchi Gallery

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as western affluence rose, so to did the disconnection between art and the public. Most people's experience of contemporary art became little more than reading in disbelief an article about the latest Turner Prize winner, or else about the escapades of a previous winners-turned celebratory millionaire.

Yet in the past few years, western affluence has been in a steady decline. This has helped reveal that many other institutions, most notably politics, banking and the media, seem to be reaching a similarly great point of disconnection with the public. For these institutions change has become not just something to be hoped for but something that would seemingly have become unavoidable. In the world of art, change appears already to be underway.

As the traditional methods for the dissemination of knowledge about art have lost either their credibility or their funding, and as with so much of our lives, the internet has taken over. Here is a quiet revolution, where much of the media and countless galleries who continue to peddle artistic alienation are being left for dead.

Dissolution chemistry
Mixed media on paper
© 2009 Megan Chapman

Through social media sites and online market places, the barriers that many saw between themselves and art are being pierced. So to in the real world, friendly faces are replacing stern and consequently, more and more people are becoming aware of the value of having art in their lives. It is a realisation that I experienced a few years ago, when I bought my first piece of art. I can vividly recall the experience.

I saw a painting I liked in an Etsy store, made by someone I knew only slightly (then) through a social media site. I liked it and realised that since it was a small paper piece, I could afford to buy it. This simple access to original art was a revelation. I saw how easy it was to own art and quite possibly always had been. For the life of me, I could not understand why I had never bought any before. So it was that with one or two mouse clicks, I became the owner of a piece of original art. In the time since then, I have bought (and traded) several more pieces of art and now have a collection that includes the work of more than ten artists. Buying art, I now realise, is like buying anything else. There is no great drama to it, no need for endless pondering or justification. If I see a piece that I like, I can simply buy it, or else negotiate payments or a trade. It is simple knowledge that I wish I had possessed for so much longer.

While most of these pieces in my collection are small, they are indistinguishably real and original art and they are on my walls. To sit among them is an indescribably pleasant feeling. I know each of the artists who made the work and so feel a personal connection to the pieces. I also feel that here, finally, is something permanent in my life, something that will with luck out last me and that perhaps some future generation will hold and enjoy and know that it was part of my life.

Uncharted territory
Mixed media on panel
© 2012 Megan Chapman
& Stewart Bremner

Paintings may still seem to many an unaffordable luxury, something only for those in the know. Happily this is an attitude that is changing. Although few of us might have the affluence we once did, we are now making our purchases armed with more knowledge and eager to shop ethically. Maybe now, rather than considering the next electronic gadget from a multinational corporation, a corporation that may well be both eroding your rights and employing semi-slaves, it is time to buy a painting from a real, live artist, an artist who will almost certainly be grateful because you have bought them more time to be an artist.

It's all the rage

This week, Megan and I took a trip through England, visiting many big public galleries. In London we visited the Tate Modern, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery; in Birmingham the Ikon Gallery and the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery; in Manchester the Manchester Art Gallery. I learned that I have almost no affinity whatsoever for conceptual art and that, if I am to believe what I saw in some of these galleries, I am only interested in art that was made before 1950. Does this not make me seem rather like a philistine? It certainly made me feel like one and that was most unwelcome.

I have documented here my problem with conceptual art several times, going as far as to label it Fashion Art. I am now, frankly, tired of this it. I'm tired of seeing it in all the major modern galleries, I'm tired of talking about it with every artist I know or meet, I'm tired of getting angry about it and, most of all, I'm tired of thinking about it. And even with all of that, I still can't stop myself from once more rehashing my experiences of it.

Having seen so much of it in the past week, at the Tate Modern and Ikon Gallery, I feel like an idiot for not understanding it, for not caring one jot about it and for thinking that it is simply cannot be art. How can I call my self an artist and yet be so completely at odds with what seems to be the major art movement of my time? When I read "As the title suggests, Steel Zinc Plain represents a territory or a space as much as an object. By placing it on the floor rather than on a plinth and allowing it to be walked across, Andre alters the viewer’s relationship to the work of art" why do I keep shaking my head and wondering what I am missing, before feeling stupid and excluded? If I had been alive in the nineteenth century, would I have shunned those appalling new pieces by the so-called Impressionists, with all of their mess and unlife-like appearance?

Conceptual art depresses me. It depresses me because it is omnipresent, seemingly to the exclusion of every other contemporary art form. I want to see work invested with feeling, that has been wrought by artists using the hand, eye and heart, rather than this stuff of sensation and empty questions. Alternately, as an artist I could simply be jealous that conceptual artists appear to be swimming in the depths of accolades and money, while the sole of my foot is barely even wet.

I ought to take a lesson from this and totally avoid conceptual art in future. This, however, would appear to be no easy task at a time when there seems to be almost no other form of contemporary art on display in public galleries, almost as if each and every curator is dancing to the beat of one drummer, following in the wake of the unclothed emperor.

In many of our public galleries, we see vast spaces taken up with a small number of thin-seeming conceptual pieces, while enormous collections are held in storage, away from the public's eye. It seems wrongheaded, especially when one considers how disengaged audiences seem to be with conceptual art, compared to more traditional forms. At the Tate Modern viewers drifted through the spaces, never seemingly stopping for long, whereas in the National Gallery some paintings held constant and barely-moving crowds in front of them like magnets.

If we are to believe these admittedly-jaundiced memories, then something is clearly amiss. It would seem that many of those in charge of the public's art purse are purchasing and showing work that the public does not particularly care for.

Recently, Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery held an Anna Barriball exhibition, that featured around twenty works lost in the brilliant white space of this mid-sized venue. On top of adding to the gallery's reputation for hosting unpopular and unlikeable art, it was shockingly empty when compared to the nearby Royal Scottish Academy. That building was playing host to the annual exhibitions of Visual Arts Scotland, the Scottish Society of Artists and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, all at once. Here was an exhibition showing a cross-section of contemporary art; a vibrant, lively and attractive show, where walls had to be jammed full of paintings and which ran for only a month.

One of the many empty spaces in Sarah Browne's
How To Use Fool's Gold in Birmingham's Ikon Gallery.

Last week in the Ikon Gallery, another attractive mid-sized space, Sarah Brown's exhibition How To Use Fool's Gold took up one whole floor. This time less than ten pieces failed to fill the space. There seemed little unity in the work and if there was a vision for the exhibition it was far from evident. Once again an exhibition of contemporary work in a modern gallery lacked any emotion and had few visitors.

When most of the money and public gallery space in contemporary art is stuck to what appears to be vacuous gimmickry, it is not just the majority of artists who suffer, but the viewing public too. The artists starve or give up to take a soul-destroying job; the public turn away from art thinking they do not like it and live an unenriched life of corporate entertainment and large-screen televisions. We can surmise that, just as with our financial world where the 1% have all of the riches, so too the art establishment only notices the fashionable 1% (some of whom it would appear are even part of the financial 1%). It is a sad state of affairs.

The "Fighting Temeraire" Tugged to her
Last Berth to be Broken up – William Turner, 1839

Happily, our England trip was not totally consumed by conceptual upset – we also got to see justly famous artworks of beauty and emotion. At the National Gallery we saw several rooms of great Impressionist works, including Degas' Combing the Hair, as well as a wall of van Goghs and Turner's stunning Fighting Temeraire. Here Megan fell for even older pieces: Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors and Jan van Wyck's Arnolfini Portrait. Up north we particularly enjoyed two Modiglianis, with one in Birmingham and one in Manchester.

Our last stop at Manchester Art Gallery, turned out to be an unexpected highlight. With an impressive, well kept and well laid-out collection, covering an almost 700 year span, it packs an impressive punch for a gallery of its size. Its rooms of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian art (including John William Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs and Charles Mengin's Sappho) were a particularly treat, which was a genuine surprise given my previous lack of interest in work of that type.

While much of this work was often beautiful and even at times emotional, little of the contemporary work on show was either. I am an artist, who by very definition makes contemporary work, work that is, to me, both emotional and beautiful. Over the past few years I've met plenty other artists who are similarly engaged. I believe that this kind of work, made using the hand, the eye and the heart, would be well received by the viewing public, if only they knew of its existence.

Today I am part of the unfashionable 99% of artists. Being unfashionable does not upset me, neither does being one of the masses. What does upset me is the skewed perception of contemporary art that our public galleries foster. It think it is time for the 99% to get their turn. Who's with me?