Completion/ and Nepotism

Here are two Journals in one. I’ve put them together because they interconnect very strongly.

 

Completing the installation

 

In a previous post https://johnhawk.art.blog/2019/02/02/my-feelings-about-my-first-weeks-back/ I talked about the installation group task I was given and then unable to do due to none of our group members being avalible to work at the same time and a snow day with no snow.

 

I prayed that the other members were able to get something done behind my back. Even if I’d had time to work on my own I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do (Or what to use).

 

Well Monday rolled around and when I got to our set things were not good.  Our leader was not in so we were a woman short, a hanging mobile with orange and black discs wasn’t up or even finished. A video and projector to project a looping video onto the wall were both missing. And there were bits and piece all over the floor.

I bought as a little time by asking we be seen last. But we only had about 20 minutes (That’s not long).

I tried cleaning up the mess for fear of getting in the way if I did anything more complicated. Then I was asked to make the string for the hanging on the mobile. But I was told the lengths I made were too short. In my defence. No one told me how long they were meant to be. Then again, I never asked.

When the time came to hang the mobile it was unbalanced. One of the four strings had nothing on it at all! And then it fell down anyway.

 

In the absence of a video projection we pulled out an old light projector and covered the top of it with all the cuttings of black and orange acetate (a sort of coloured film. It looks like this  ) that I had gathered up earlier. On the one hand I’m glad it was being put to good use. But it felt irritating having to pull it out after putting it away. Still. It made a nice light show.

 

And we just threw the mobile and the rest of our materials on the floor.

So, in total. Our “installation” was made up of, four paintings on the wall that ranged from mediocre to awful. A light projection on the next wall where the colours and patterns where made from discarded acetate clippings (Basically, rubbish). And a pile of discarded art materials and a broken mobile thrown onto the floor. Also one marble that ended up in the piece by chance.

In short. A mess, with all the bits that were meant to give it theme and context either missing or broken. What else would you expect for a piece that had to be made in twenty minutes?

So of course the teacher and the other fine art students loved it.

That’s the nice thing about 21st century fine art. You can’t really fail at it. If anything can be art then what does it matter if it’s basically a mess made in the time it takes to watch an episode of The Simpsons?

There is an odd effect where viewers will assume a final piece is exactly the way the artist wanted it and imagined it in their heads. While the actual artist can see hundreds of mistakes, deviations and imperfections in their own work and can barely stand the sight of it. They think us wizards who can just poof something right out of our heads. Even the best artists can’t stand most of their own work. But the public just assumes the product and the vision are one and the same. I suspect this goes to the Nth degree for modern fine art where there are no standards of quality or technical methods. So of course whatever you make is perfect by virtue of its mere existence.

 

In all fairness, our group representative was completely honest about what it was meant to be, what happened, and what we ended up making.  But none of the people there seemed to mind.

And that’s how the three of us got a pat on the back for failing miserably!

 

Did I learn anything about teamwork from this?

Nothing that I haven’t covered before…. It’s hard to be a great team when your never in the same room. I’ve learned again that I would hate the army. I can’t stand having to depend on someone-else for orders and ideas. And I’ve learned even the most dedicated team can’t make a masterpiece (Or even something presentable) in 20 minutes.

Now I can guess what a teacher would say to me next, or at least imply. “Okay then. Do you feel you are better teamwork then!? Do you like it more?”

The answer to both questions is no. This was a disaster. And I makes me more certain I am better on my own. At least the people I was working with were nice. But being nice isn’t what makes having a team work. It should be something more than than. Something that makes us more than the sum of our parts. But that happening seems to be a rare event. One you can’t force by shoving four random people together for a week, And one that can’t happen if I’m involved.

 

Have I gained any artistic knowledge or experience from this?…..

No.

I was basically someone-else’s errand boy during the little time I had to work on this. Doing menial jobs like tidying rubbish or carrying ladders. This was a fine art project and I was just the hired help. The most creative thing I did was make a terrible painting in an hour that wouldn’t be worth throwing on a fire.

Thanks for the experience Cardiff Met. I’m sure that will come in handy when I’m trying to survive in the art world (sarcasm).

 

There’s one more thing I want to talk about. This would normally go in an extra thoughts journal. But this project has got me thinking about this a lot.

 

Modern Art is Nepotism

 

Now I’m using this in the general rather than criminal sense of the word. So don’t be alarmed.

It seems to me that the art world is nepotism these days. Now there has always been an element of this. No artist ever makes it through pure talent. Even western Primitive artists like Alfred Wallis with no education in art or ties to the art world will get noticed by some critic, dealer, or professional artist who then spread word of them to the masses. Anyone who got famous was given a job or a spotlight by someone with means or influence. This even applies to people like Shakespeare or Beethoven. Someone looked at their work and said “I want this” Alfred Hitchcock would never have gotten anywhere if every film studio had turned him down. Maybe the internet and technology will change this but that remains to be seen. For now no-one ever gets big just through being really good.

But at least with old media you had to genuinely be good to last. All the influencers in the world cannot save a bad product. At best you can be James Cameron’s Avatar or the Matrix sequels. Makes a lot of money but basically forgotten or mocked within 5 to 10 years. But most of the time even if the studios/galleries and critics were all behind you but you made bad work it would not help at all. So nepotism was what would get you your break. But you had to be good to have any real success.

When it comes to modern fine art/post-modern art/conceptual art there is no way to make bad art. If it is made by an artist it is good. It doesn’t need to fit any criteria or meet any standards. It doesn’t need to fit any standards of beauty or even mean anything. Sitting in chair can be great work of art if you claim it to be. Just be sure to film yourself doing it so you have proof you did your art. And remember. The sitting in the chair is the art. Not the recording of it.

So if anything can be a great work of art then why can’t I make a huge chunk of money by just taking a walk and filming it? The answer: Status. In modern art your status is what gets you work respect rather than your work giving you status.

When Marcel Duchamp put a urinal in an art gallery he had was only able to do so because he had the connections to do so, albeit under the pseudonym ‘R Mutt’. And when it came under attack he was considered notable enough that his defence of R Mutt was considered worth listening to in its own right. And he had friends, defenders and contacts to back him up who were also considered of note.  If R Mutt had been a real person, some nobody from the New York slums, his urinal would have been thrown out before and that would have been the end of it. Duchamp was clear that there was no deeper meaning or aesthetic value to the work. And to to to do so was vile heresy. All that mattered was that he declared it art. The work itself has no value. The only value it has is that Duchamp “made” it. This idea has been applied to other works of non-art like a tin of an artist’s excrement. A sealed box full of an artist’s breath. And a walk taken by an artist. I have also breathed, excreted, and walked. I do all three almost everyday. Why don’t I have tons of money and a page on the Tate website? The answer is connections. They had connections in the art world. I don’t. Nepotism.

This ties back into the garbage I made on Monday. It had no skill put into it. No value. And anything that could have given it meaning was missing. So why did it get praise from the teacher and the fine art students? Because they new the people who worked on it. And being part of the clique gave it value. Where as anyone who didn’t know us would have not even know it was a single work of art. As opposed to a four “paintings” and a mess on the floor. We did not got praised on any merit in our work. We got by on Nepotism.

 

One last point I want to make. This last two weeks have been focused entirely on the fine art students. As a group we have been tasked to make fine art things. Video pieces and installations. Even the language is aimed towards fine art. The subtext for us animators has been “Just go along and work in some ideas you picked up in Animation if you want to”. Why wasn’t one of the tasks to make an animation and the fine art students could follow our lead?

I feel like the message being sent across the Field module is that we are second-class students. That we need to be more like them. But this is not true. Unlike modern art, in animation you do have to try your hardest. It’s a skill. You can do it badly. If I can’t get a motion right everyone will see and judge me lacking. If I don’t learn to do it well I will be passed over for more skilled animators.

Why is it I am still being pressured to choose something other than animation? I tried my hand at metal work, screen printing, painting, sculpture, illustration, photography and fabric in the years it took to get to uni. Most of them I did not because I wanted to. But because I was asked to so I could comply with the courses. And comply I have. And every time I turned back to animation. And now I feel like I being pressured to reconsider the mess that is modern “Fine art”. Please stop doing this! How long do I have to try other fields before I am allowed to become an animator!

This hurts.