2. The Problem with Contemporary Art is not the Contemporary

On the Necessity of Art's Exit from Contemporary Art:
2. The Problem with Contemporary Art is not the Contemporary
Suhail Malik, with responses from Liam Gillick
Friday, May 17, 7pm
Talk

[duncanweller]

You can figure out what contemporary art is, as a whole, by taking different analytical routes. You can ask, what is contemporary arts' social functions in comparison to the social functions of the arts of the past. They are completely different. You can look at the numbers, maybe the number of works produced in comparison to other works by artists who hold different belief systems. You can look at the money. Who earns the most from contemporary art? How many people are employed in the contemporary art world - in universities, as gallery directors, as curators, as agents and art critics? There seems to be tens of thousands of people employed. I notice that many contemporary artists have no drawing or painting skills and often have to hire other people to create the work. Many have huge workshops. Maybe a primary function of contemporary art is to allow people who have no artistic ability to pretend that they are artists. Another function of contemporary art might be to displace the talented artists by creating a campaign against them. This can be done by creating activist artists who are always in rebellion to traditional forms of art, who rail against the past in favour of a line of progress thinking and by making people believe that the history of ideas is more important than actually having something worthwhile to say, or creating entertainment. Maybe the primary function of contemporary art is to create works that allow people to status signal. In supporting contemporary art and the institutions that house the art one group of people can feel superior to another group. There are lots of ways to figure out what contemporary art is up to. Maybe contemporary art is the safest art in the world, a form of imagery that doesn't question the powers that be and especially the people who fund and purchase this kind of work - you know, millionaires and billionaires. Could be.