Arts wars

The narrator of the documentary “Photographing Intimacy” spoke with such authority that, at times, I almost found myself nodding in concert.

He was talking of photo art as if the artists’ intentions had no meaning. The assumption is that the art just exists and has its meaning in the eye of the observer and chop-chow to the artist.

And I can see that this approach has merit. But it is not universally agreed upon, as any attendee of an art opening could tell you.

Once in a while I get talked into going to an art opening, very much against my better judgement. Actually it probably takes two years for the horror of the previous event to be sufficiently erased from my memory for my resistance to be sub-thresholded.

At an art opening I always, without exception, find myself in a small circle of wine-wielding experts, together with the artist. Some local hero will be spouting on about where the art fits into the latest development of the post-construction figmentism movement. And everyone will be nodding sagely and even contributing an opinion or two.

Someone might segue into French or German, just to cover a wine-induced senior moment. The lead protagonist will start softly just to check there are no academics in the audience and once having validated this will launch into a full scale (de)construction.

There are essentially 100-200 key nouns, adjectives and verbs, not commonly used in everyday language, that must be strung together in a certain rhythmic sonance in order to achieve a tune that sounds convincing. This whole procedure is learned slowly over many years at the feet of other experts and devotees of the cargo cult.

But if there is an academic in the audience then your expert will tread very lightly. Your academic sees no irony in using 100% left brain processes to study the outcomes of a process that is 100% right brained. He or she has a working mental mud-map of Western philosophy and psychology wherein he or she can pigeon hole any work of art or any artist. Just occasionally they excitedly get to make a new pigeon hole.

The artist, poor bastard, just wants to sell his or her expensive raw materials (& improvements thereupon) for food and grog. The whole silly charade sometimes causes the artist to engage the vestiges of the left hand side of the brain in order to communicate some hastily fabricated intentions to the lead protagonist, any academics present and the audience.

This should end in tears but it often does not; quod erat demonstrandum.

Irony intended.