\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLet\u2019s therefore look at how and why Hirst\u2019s career took such a turn (and why a lot of contemporary art will face the same music eventually):<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with why it failed, because his why was actually interlaced with what interests us the most \u2014 purpose. Damien Hirst\u2019s work does not have any purpose, but what is even more problematic than that, it had no capability to ever have a purpose \u2014 at least not in the usual sense of how artworks become integrated into society.<\/p>\n
While nothing really has purpose on its own, things achieve purpose because people project function upon them. If done individually, such a mechanism produces singular tools, like hammers, spears and axes, and if done communally (meaning by a group of likeminded people), such mechanisms create systems.<\/p>\n
These systems are more or less just collections of particular tools and their interrelations, that, exactly because of these interrelations, produce much more complex and profound meanings and usage scenarios, than if the tools weren\u2019t part of a singular system (think Gestalt theory) .<\/p>\n
Simply put, the fax machine when it was invented was useless, just like the phone was useless, because such a tool\u2019s only purpose was to connect to other similar tools. If you\u2019re the only guy or gal with a fax machine, it just doesn\u2019t make sense to have one. You need others to have it too, and only by a myriad of other fax machines in operation does you own fax machine become a valuable asset \u2014 the more fax machines there are, the more valuable yours is.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s similar with art, too. A painting is only as valuable (in monetary and historical\/cultural terms) as the amount of people that share the belief of it being valuable.<\/p>\n
You can also think of the amusing joke that used to circulate the internet (and probably still does in some places), where a distinction between religion and clinical insanity is drawn by comparing how many other people also believe and can communicate with an imaginary man, living in the sky. If you\u2019re the only one one, you\u2019re most likely crazy and should be hospitalised, but if it\u2019s thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, well, then it\u2019s OK, because it\u2019s a religion.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t wish to press any buttons here, religion has its place in society (take it from a no-nonsense atheist).<\/p>\n
But to get back to our example about Hirst; his works, while incredibly amusing, profoundly shocking in their nature and extremely well done, did lack one important part \u2014 a perpetual common ground amongst the art goers that saw them.<\/p>\n
Without it, they would (and did) vanish into oblivion, because if a work of art does not possess the ability to latch-on to a particular aspect of its contemporary cultural context (or in hindsight the same context, but viewed in retrospect), the work cannot hope to stay significant after the initial shock has lingered and the magician turning the knobs and leavers behind the green curtain gets outed by the public.<\/p>\n
To propose a more general example, imagine a portrait painter of the 18th century \u2014 anyone really, it doesn\u2019t matter \u2014 because our hypothetical (or real) portraitist will be of the \u201ccrowd pleasing\u201d verity, meaning his or her (but let\u2019s not kid ourselves, it\u2019s the 18th century, it\u2019s his) art will most not be created to embody any deeper meaning or message, apart form the obvious goal of portraying his commissioners in the best manner possible.<\/p>\n
Such works will most likely be shunned by his contemporaries and the only possibility of ever attaining significance in the grander scheme of things will be if after let\u2019s say one hundred years or so, historians establish our crowd-pleasing artist\u2019s era as a time of empty shenanigans and meaningless debauchery.<\/p>\n
In the grand image created, his work might become a prominent example of his time, because the merit upon which quality has been decided has changed for the usual \u201chow much impact does any particular thing or person have on its society\u201d to \u201chow much of a particular thing or person is (or was) present in society\u201d \u2014 to say differently, quality has morphed into quantity.<\/p>\n
And this phase of understanding Hirst\u2019s body of work is still to come, as much more time has to pass for the collective thought to become detached from what has been in the context of what is now, to notice and propose such an understanding of art (and everything else we produce).<\/p>\n
But the gist of the starting remark was that art has no purpose, only consequences, so let\u2019s explore how that fits into everything we\u2019ve talked about so far.<\/p>\n
Art \u2014 like everything we create to be part of our society \u2014 has purpose, because everything that is observed intently by a being ultimately has some purpose.<\/p>\n
Even if just a tiny, insignificant one, like the purpose of a pebble that was moulded by millions of years of environmental change and turmoil, only to be tossed into a lake by a child at one time in its existence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s really the system in which art is exhibited that helps it attain some form of purpose; as we\u2019ve stated, for anything to have \u201ca purpose\u201d, it first has to be noticed, and with an ineffable amount of things floating in the universe, noticing any particular thing is quite the statistical miracle.<\/p>\n
Galleries (and museums) help here, because they serve as undeniable locations where art and art-like objects can be found. After any object has been placed inside a gallery or museum, it kinda becomes art \u2014 if nothing else, it gets a chance to be scrutinised by members of the inner sanctum of any particular art society (or even the whole art world if we\u2019re talking mega-exhibitions).<\/p>\n
The way such progressions form is by first attaining the status of \u201cmaybe it\u2019s art\u201d, then evolving to \u201cyep, it\u2019s art\u201d and sometimes to \u201cmagnificent art\u201d. In rare cases, a work will even become \u201cthe best of its time\u201d!<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a rough draft of how that happens:<\/p>\n
The art-like objects can usually be found in galleries (especially lower tier ones). Because they are located inside of the gallery (sometimes they can also be found outside), they get the status of \u201cmaybe it\u2019s art\u201d. After the show opens, they are judged primarily by a smaller group of people, and if they pass, they are given the \u201cyep, it\u2019s art\u201d stamp of approval \u2014 albeit a tiny stamp to be honest.<\/p>\n
But the journey doesn\u2019t just end there, now, if a person of higher status and stature finds them particularly interesting, they might get another chance at a bigger gallery and for a larger, more important crowd (usually they judge how well they can be incorporated into contemporary society in the context of not only the \u201cnow\u201d, but also the past and sometimes even the future).<\/p>\n
If they pass that part too, they might become \u201cgood art\u201d or \u201cmagnificent art\u201d and if eventually they end up in any permanent museum collections, they attain the label of \u201ccertainty\u201d and such artistic objects usually go on to become \u201cthe best of their time\u201d\u2014 that\u2019s why artist\u2019s works grow more important if they become part of any museum\u2019s permanent collection.<\/p>\n
But, all of this is still only talking about purpose though, there is still no sign of consequence. My personal take on why this is so, is because the consequence part is only true at the initial phase of the artistic process \u2014 when we are creating art \u2014 and we haven\u2019t been talking about that at all.<\/p>\n
We rarely even see that part of the artistic process, it we\u2019re being honest! The problem is, that at the end of a long painting session or after the completion of a sculpture, the status of the finished object transforms from personal and intimate exploration of self, into a public trace of the process that has unfolded.<\/p>\n
This of course doesn\u2019t ring exactly true for performance art, happenings and the like, where the process of personal exploration itself becomes the literal (and ephemeral) trace \u2014 the artwork \u2014 but regardless if anything you create has a physical body in some way or another or if it\u2019s just a fleeting moment in time, it\u2019s all the same as far as questions of purpose and consequence are concerned.<\/p>\n
The process of creation bears as its consequence the trace; that\u2019s the art work. This is the intimate part of creation, the part that no-one can really explain away by saying \u201cYou did it, because of this or that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIts existence is not a consequence of any particular concept or desire, it is a consequence of being. This is the place where no-one can judge a good or bad expression, what matters is that whatever it is that needs to go out is actually expressed, and that it\u2019s done so fully and without constraints.<\/p>\n
This is the space where play happens, where we let go and enter into a state of just being.<\/p>\n
But after playtime is over, after we regain full consciousness and contextualise ourselves again in the grander scheme of society, time and space, our creations, the traces of our free expression can become imbued with purpose, but only if we so desire. If we do, we present them to the public and insert them into the system that we call \u201cThe Art World\u201d (though sadly it\u2019s now more or less referred to as \u201cThe Art Market\u201d).<\/p>\n
If they appreciate our creation and we have the right combination of good timing and luck, our creations beget purpose, because people create it because of them and project it onto them. If not, they stay consequences, consequences of pure will, determination and the ability to let go and synchronise with the moment.<\/p>\n
In either case, it\u2019s always a combination of courage, skill and craft. Without courage, artisans create empty shells, without skill and craft, artists create bollocks. But in the middle, there lays the promised land of not only appreciation and monetary independence, but also of a life fully lived.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An interesting sentence, uttered by a friend of mine while we were chatting over drinks, was that \u201cArt has no purpose, only consequences.\u201d and these six words really struck a chord with me. In today\u2019s blunder therefore, I\u2019d like to…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4786,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions\/4786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/survivingart.com\/si\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}