Category: General

So our Trace isn’t very happy about the ‘Public Sniggering’ at the loss of art in the recent blaze at Momart, infact she is outraged.

Speaking yesterday, Emin said: “What has really upset me isn’t the loss of the work, it is the reaction by the British public. ‘Good riddance to bad art’, the general public sniggering on an audience like [BBC Radio 4’s]Any Questions.”

She continues

“I am not saying they have to understand it. What I am saying is don’t laugh at it when it all burns down in a fire. That is just not fair and it is not funny. It is not polite and it is bad manners. I would never laugh at a disaster like that.”

However I am sure the public would be much more upset if the artists didn’t have certain attitudes towards their own work. Attitudes that seem to be saying to the audience, ‘fuck you’. The nature of most modern British art is one of self-negation, destruction and throw away. Is it any wonder that when the art is literally thrown away the British public (with somewhat a penchant for irony) find the result a little funny?

Emin was once was quoted as saying “The other day I hated my art so much I wanted to smash it, like you abuse a faithful lover.”?

Also ‘I need art like I need God’. I am not sure of Emin’s religious beliefs, but this ambiguous quote seems to suggest both that she needs art and does not need art, depending on the audiences religious viewpoint.

Yet “For years, I made religious art”, Emin declares “Then I destroyed it, I did, like, a thousand drawings of Jesus being crucified; I was very interested in Mary Magdalene, I did drawings of her at His feet; I did the Wedding Feast at Cana, and John the Baptist’s hand – just his hand. And I did lots of Depositions”.

So it appears she is somewhat religious but at the same time destroys the art associated with it. Hmmm, again an almost paradoxical quote. She herself seems to be obsessed with the destruction of her own work, and indeed the destruction of the idea behind it.

I may be wrong but it seems to me that the meaning is not lost on the British public, infact I think they get the concepts extremely well, possibly better than Emin?

Anyway, maybe we are all philistines in this country, maybe we are not, maybe we just find the idea that self-destructive work has been destroyed by matters out of the artist’s hands just a little funny.

So, lets us finish here with a quote from Emin:

“I do not believe that at this moment in time, if that changes in years to come I don’t know, but what happens here today and changes as we go along that is part of life’s learning and part of your inner beliefs.”

Clear things up for you?

So the art has literally consumed itself. On Wednesday a warehouse fire destroyed more than 100 artworks from Charles Saatchi’s famous collection. Works such as Tracy Emin’s tent and works by Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas were also destroyed.

Of course any piece of creative work destroyed is always distressing, yet when work of this particular ilk is lost , I can’t but help thinking that it is somewhat ironic. Much of this style of work thrives on the conceptual basis of anti-art, takes its lead from our throw-away culture and planned obscelescense. It is in its own admission somewhat of a fraud, placing much less emphasis on the importance of the object and much more on the concept. So does it really matter that the actual work has been destroyed? Does it in any way enhance the work?

Baudrillard:

“Operational negativity, of all those scenarios of deterrence which, like Watergate, try to regenerate a moribund principle by simulated scandal, phantasm, murder-a sort of hormonal treatment by negativity and crisis. It is always a question of proving the real by the imaginary, proving truth by scandal, proving the law by transgression, proving work by the strike, proving the system by crisis and capital by revolution.”

If anything if you could salvage any charred, melted, fused works could they not in fact increase in value due the works pre-disposal to scandal and self-destruction? A kind of mega-art (that finally has some narrative). I look forward to the first show – ‘Inferno’.

Of course the artists are very upset by the destruction, understandably, but are the tears for the work simply for the lack of control? Could it be that the destruction of art, the negating of the concepts of traditional art needs to be controlled just as much by Tracey Emin as Michael Angelo controlled the brush.

“Everything is metamorphosed into its inverse in order to be perpetuated in its purged form. Every form of power, every situation speaks of itself by denial, in order to attempt to escape, by simulation of death, its real agony.”

Again Baudrillard babbling away. But interesting point, simulation of death, not actual death (or burnt to a crisp). The simulacrum has been distorted by real world events, and bought crashing down to earth. The works power seemed to be in the simulation of death, or more accurately, the ‘I could have done that’ concept so often cited by the public at these works.

So what now for art, will this have an effect? Will people move away from the self-destruction of art, or move ever more closely to hyper-reality to avoid such an event again?

Essentially its all a load of tosh. Burn’t tosh