As The Tate, and in particular Tate Modern, gets increasingly populist there is a curious disjunction between the art world insiders who attend the private views and the audience at whom these exhibitions are aimed. On my way in to the opening of A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance I ran into Jemima Stehli, Milly Thompson and Coline Milliard, among others.
The first room was reserved for the biggest names – who even most of the tourists who flock to Tate Modern will recognise – Jackson Pollock and David Hockney. It was here I ran into Avi Pichon who told me he’d just returned to London from a trip home to Israel. Until I pointed it out, Avi had managed to miss Jackson Pollock’s Summertime (1948), which was laid out flat on a low plinth beneath a film of Pollock painting in his studio. Later Coline Milliard quoted a piece of the curational promotional blurb about Hockney’s painting A Bigger Splash (from which the show takes its title) that she featured in her Artinfo preview of the exhibition: “the painting becomes an artificial backdrop that opens up a theatrical space, implying the viewer’s entrance into its fictional role.” Milliard then told me (as she had told readers of her blog earlier that day): “Surely this is how all painting has operated since the Renaissance.”
Room 2 was where I ran into Tate film curator Stuart Comer and we exchanged a few words as I took in that this space was yet more familiar ground for me: Niki de Saint Phalle, Yves Klein, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, and the Japanese Gutai group. Next came The Viennese Actionists, Hélio Oiticica, Jack Smith, Stuart Brisley etc. – all names that will be instantly recognisable to anyone au fait with the more transgressive end of 1960s and 1970s art and anti-art. This was followed by a less successful room dedicated to the idea of identity transformation and then an equally strange transition to installations with a focus on single contemporary artists or artist groups.
I spent a long time hovering at the transition point between parts one and two of the show – not because I was looking at the work – this was the result of falling into conversation with Nicole Yip, who currently curates at the Firstsite Gallery. While the first part of the show was a bit too obvious from my perspective, most of the work in it is at least worth checking out. I didn’t see anything I liked in the second part of the exhibition, but I found the kitsch tat of the Slovenian IRWIN group particularly redundant and ridiculous. IRWIN’s tosh is an embryonic and poorly thought through form of institutional critique that apes totalitarian forms and often ends up appealing to male adolescents (of all ages) who dream of strong heroes and absolute truth: exactly the opposite response to the one the IRWIN tossers claim to want – or at least you might be led to believe they want if you are gullible enough to accept the claims made about them by some of their fanboy ‘critics’.
Milly Thompson had been keen to get through the exhibition fast so that she could get to the booze. I lost sight of her early on, until emerging from the show I too hit the drinks and found Milly in my line of vision – here I also encountered Ingrid Svenson, Andrew Wilson and Simon Bedwell (like Milly Thompson an ex-member of the artist group BANK).
To sum up, I had a good night out and thought it pleasant enough to look again at work by the likes of Pinot-Gallizio and Oiticica (since what they do has long grooved me), but when I left I couldn’t help thinking that the show was aimed at the tourists who flock to Tate Modern and not at me. I’d prefer to see shows that are more rigorous and coherent, and I don’t see why that should necessarily make them less popular.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by Michael Roth on 2012-11-14 02:14:05 +0000
After reading your review and looking at the Tate site, I agree this exhibit is more like a survey (in scope) with a general audience in mind. That said, it seems to be a decent intro for art newbies. Of interest to me would be the Viennese Actionists. I’m not that familiar with Hélio Oiticica and Niki de st Phalle, but their pieces would be interesting to see in person. The same goes for Pollock, who I don’t mind, especially seeing the paintings up close. I can’t stand Hockney, although I’ve been reading an online (fictional?) bio which is brilliant. I can do without IRWIN or NSK which I find boring.
Sounds like a good night out, especially after the show!
Comment by Lucy Johnson on 2012-11-14 15:14:39 +0000
I do not know all of these names either, therefore I will be looking them up!
Thanks!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-11-14 16:15:49 +0000
You’ll find some of this material covered in my 1988 book Assault on Culture… and other stuff elsewhere in my writing. The paint filled balloons to be shot at to obliterate the wall mural in the 1987 group installation I was part of (Desire In Ruins at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow) was inspired by Niki de Saint Phalle. And glad Michael agrees with me IRWIN and NSK are complete pants.
Comment by Lucy Johnson on 2012-11-14 18:42:03 +0000
Very interesting!
Comment by Steve on 2012-11-14 21:57:53 +0000
On a completely-unrelated note, is/was The Situationist Times worth a look? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a copy and I must say I’m kind of curious:
http://store.boo-hooray.com/product/the-situationist-times-facsimile-pre-order-ships-fall-2012
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-11-14 22:52:32 +0000
Yes it’s a really beautiful publication and is visually beautiful. For background see Karen Kurczynski’s text discussing the six issues of “The Situationist Times” in the Fear Nothing Expect Anything anthology. You can buy the paperback or get the PDF for free online: http://www.nebulabooks.dk/ExpectAnything.pdf
Comment by Steve on 2012-11-14 22:59:03 +0000
That link looks great – thank you!!
Comment by Yukiko Kanazawa on 2012-11-15 00:00:05 +0000
Did you wear a dress for the opening? I hope so!
Comment by Dirty Pam on 2012-11-15 01:19:21 +0000
Surely the title of the show and painting is an allusion to coprophilia. You get a bigger splash from poo than piss!
Comment by FIona Smith on 2012-11-15 15:38:27 +0000
Simon Bedwell is hot!
Comment by Jennifer Jones on 2012-11-15 16:12:08 +0000
But John Russell is hotter and word hasn’t it that rather than going to this Tate opening he was at a Raven Row talk! Although I guess two out of three prominent ex-Bank members being present at a Tate opening ain’t bad…..
Comment by Woodrow Taylor on 2012-11-15 17:52:28 +0000
But isn’t it really the collectors who actually determine what is art?
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-11-15 19:32:22 +0000
You’re right in so far as the Tate shows and collects very little by artists who aren’t represented by commercial galleries. However in the case of A Bigger Splash audience footprint would also seem to be a factor – so I guess the curation is more like a dialectical interplay between the two.
Comment by Boudica of the Iceni on 2012-11-15 20:41:25 +0000
Looking at Yves Klein’s work leaves me feeling blue… I think he was suffering from woad envy!
Comment by Maureen Ramsey on 2012-11-15 22:59:52 +0000
But if you’d been at Tate Britain you could have attended the talk Elizabeth Price gave that night! So what was Simon Bedwell doing at Tate Modern?
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-11-16 00:23:49 +0000
Re ‘feeling blue’: it would be more indigo than woad envy in Klein’s case especially as the colour blue in our sense is a rather late arrival – the Middle Ages.
Comment by Mike Rimmer on 2012-11-16 00:43:45 +0000
There’s a good reason why that little curator y has a huge smile on his face. Because artist x has got her tongue all up in some curator butt….. Now if you’re sad and you’re feeling blue several inches of tongue up your butt will soon sort that out! And kiss kiss kiss (that curator/critic/art bureaucrat/collector butt) is the only way for an artist to get ahead and get a career!
Comment by Lucy Johnson on 2012-11-16 08:43:46 +0000
Such is life!
Comment by Guy The Bore on 2012-11-16 18:54:41 +0000
Art life is more like half-life….
Comment by Archie Cane on 2012-11-17 00:22:12 +0000
Sugar sugar!
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-11-17 01:34:28 +0000
Sugar: no need to be cryptic – it was money from slavery which paid for the founding of the Tate. Every document of culture is a document of barbarism, as Walter Benjamin said and I keep repeating.
Comment by Lucy Johnson on 2012-11-17 08:27:47 +0000
Too bad….