For Art’s Sake

“Don’t walk that way!” barks a gallerista at me in a London museum. I can’t help my funny walk I think to myself, but I’ve got a feeling that what she meant was I should follow a certain strict route around the exhibition, which considering it’s a showcase of so-christened ‘street art’ tickles me no end. When a show is dedicated to the ultimate free-for-all, break-every-rule, anti-Establishment school of art, why be so precious about how punters journey around it?

I asked the Gestapo gallerista the same question and got this priceless reply: “This is the way we designed the show and how it’s meant to be seen.” Eh? So, I’m at an exhibition of art which, by definition, is all about freedom of expression – as all art is – and I can’t mill around freely, forming my own opinion? Why not cut the confusion altogether and install a Travelator in every museum so we can glide along robotically watching the art go by as if on a Tesco checkout?

The real problem lies in the place museum-going occupies in the British psyche. We’re too intimidated, in awe, enslaved by what we should think instead of just thinking for ourselves. So, we dutifully follow the arrows and stick limpet-like to the audio guide and off we trot to read from the gallery gospel without any deviation from the museum-prescribed path. But isn’t the whole point of art to prick some kind of reaction, be it good or bad? Shouldn’t it provoke that punch in the gut that is specific to you personally? Even if the artists themselves are there on hand in front of you to explain their motivation and what effect they wanted to create, it shouldn’t matter: whatever response you have is entirely an individual thing and shouldn’t be committee-dictated.

It’s very different in other countries. I was in Paris recently and the people traffic in the museums there was fascinating. There were teenagers jabbering away animatedly whilst simultaneously dicking about on their iPhones, desk monkeys on their lunch break taking in some art with a side-order of baguette, couples snogging amongst the sculptures – the French position art as part of life and not something to be religiously revered as otherworldly, separate, untouchable. And that’s our problem. We pedestal museums as churches, hushed mausoleums that taxidermy art for us to worship at its altar. But art, in its bare essence, is meant to be a living, breathing entity that engages us in a dialogue. And you wanna know something? In that conversation, we are allowed to speak. For art’s sake we need to be heard.

The Devolution Of Responsibility & The Politics Of Entitlement

The ticker on Sky News was trailing, “LONDON BURNING”, and for a second – actually an age – the world felt surreal, in slo-mo, apocalyptic, like when the Twin Towers fell or when London was attacked on 7/7. We were superglued to the rolling news, to the war-like scenes of devastation; repulsed, reeling, incredulous yet still unable to move. It was so, so shocking.

To be honest, I don’t know why we were all so shocked by the riots that spread across the country this week. It’s been a long time coming if we really think about it. We just didn’t want to open our eyes and see.

Amy

I wrote this about Amy in 2008. I wish the story had a different ending.

Tortured soul

I’m slow on the uptake. Anyone who knows me will vouch for my inability to move with the times. Hence, only recently taking possession of an iPod, which has predictably revolutionised my listening life and means I’m now down wiv da kids choons-wise. Well, sort of. Because I’ve only just discovered Back To Black. You know, Amy Winehouse’s mega-charting album that’s had major crit ticks, a fruitful commercial yield and garnered its creator a clutch of gongs. Like I said, tortoise-slow. A shame, really, because the album is a visceral yell from the pit of a broken heart, like Winehouse has taken her pain and insecurities and smeared them over a mixing desk.