Clearly a broad question but what is the role of art and art galleries?

Today I went to a modern art gallery in which, on one floor, an employee of the gallery had been given the opportunity to curate his own exhibition. Whilst I was in the room, a group of high school students where being given an introduction to the work by a different member of staff. The room was full of graffiti. On one wall directly opposite the entrance to the room was a full size piece of ‘writing’ – classic style typography in 6 foot high letters. It was sprayed directly onto the plaster, but this was the only piece unframed. Around the rest of the room were other smaller pieces, some on poster size paper stuck onto the wall, some on post-it size paper, but mostly they were framed. I have always liked graffiti, the variations of styles, the colours, the words, the typography, the way a well sprayed picture easily rivals anything done with paint on canvas. The work in here was nowhere near the quality I have seen either outside in places like Marseilles or Barcelona, or in magazines or books like On The Run or Spraycan Art, but it was accomplished enough to be interesting to take a look at briefly. But I was far more interested in hanging about to hear how a group of 16 year old boys would have this art explained to them, and also the broader question of “what the fuck is going on?”. Why is graffiti being framed and put in galleries, and conversely, why did the National Gallery in London run a show where copies of classic paintings where printed in high quality and put up on street walls? Why is art inside out? It was all OK when the YBA’s were at it….wasn’t it?

Some time ago I listened to a great Philosophy Bites episode with Derek Matravers on what constitutes a work of art. Its clearly a huge, grey, financially motivated subject and I don’t intend to go in-depth here. Though part of what he spoke about was interesting in relation to graffiti. Matravers made the point that what ties something modern and controversial like Tracy Emin’s ‘Bed’ to the art world is that she is institutionalised as an ‘artist’: taught at an appropriate and ‘recognised’ art college, and therefore whatever she claims to be art, as an artist, makes it art. There’s a touch of Midas about this, clearly. Its certainly not a watertight argument and Matravers wasn’t arguing in its favour, but it seems to make a lot of sense. It means artworks are defined by their legacy and not by their popularity and it makes a strong case for the idea that modern art has been completely commodified: if you train to be a watchmaker then that’s what you ‘do’, and that’s what you’re paid to do. If you’re an artist, likewise. Though perhaps its always been like that – Michaelangelo was paid to paint too.

Today I was reminded of Matravers point whilst flicking through some cards in the gallery shop (more commodification). These cards were typical gallery shop fare: random collections of images from the history of art to modern day, quant though clichéd, possibly because they were pictures of art removed from context. These cards particularly so, because they were images by Banksy. Here was someone’s art photographed and reduced to the simplicity of a gift card, and after all his hard work ‘establishing’ himself. Banksy didn’t go to Goldsmiths. He doesn’t know Saatchi (well, he might now). All his hard work, having to chip away at the artworld from the outside. Having not flowed into the artworld by the correct channels and by befriending the right people, here was someone who had to personally take their work into art galleries and hang it themselves, ostensibly as a publicity stunt, but actually, because there was no other way to publicly transform from the lowly street artist to the dizzy heights of a successful artworld artist. Not only did he do that, but the work he chose to use was work which gleefully sabotaged classic paintings. Again, purported to be a ’statement’, but actually it was his only option.

The schoolboys at the exhibition were told that “this kind of work” is “all about emotions” often created by “people your age”. And that was it. The gallery employee, though confident and experienced, really had no other way of describing the graffiti and seemed to be quietly wondering why it was in the gallery herself. So was I. She began to rely on the timeless avoidance technique of describing everything objectively instead – “the work is 12 by 12 inches and you can still see the undercoat of paint if you look at the sides”. This to me, was strikingly similar to putting works of art onto gift wrapping, cards and mugs: awkward and out of place. The very ‘non-establishment’ concept that still surrounds graffiti, perpetuated mostly by the media rather than practitioners, is completely at odds with being framed, placed in a gallery and needing explanation to the age group who created it.

To attempt to answer my own question, perhaps its galleries themselves that have become a commodity, not the art inside them. They’re like airports now, with their expensive shops, their expanses of glass and concrete, security guards watching, and their “walk here” and “do not touch” signage.

It was on a British programme called Ghosts On The Underground that I first heard about the WWII tragedy at Bethnal Green Station. The programme’s format was to interview LU staff, who spun their ghoulish tales to camera, interspersed with dramatised vignettes and some great photography of the underground system. The Tube, having been built on countless gravesites and plague pits, and witness to many human disaters, is always ripe for tales of well known and not-so-well-known stations and their spooky happenings after hours.

One particular interview that has stuck with me was about Bethnal Green station. This is because it was my local station at the time I watched the programme. On 3 March 1943, amidst a period of WWII when more civilians were dying than soldiers, a mass panic ensued at Bethnal Green station which was doubling as a public bomb shelter. At 8.17 the air raid alert sounded and 1500 people fled into the station which already contained between five and six hundred people. At 8.27 a local anti-aircraft launcher fired rockets into the sky, which began a mass panic amongst people on the street. Those trying to get into the station believed the bottleneck at the entrance was caused by people being refused entry and so they began to push.  Moments later and people were being crushed to death, their screams masked by the sound of gunfire and rockets. 173 men, women and children were crushed to death, and a further 14 men, 33 women and 15 children were seriously injured. Ironically, no bombs had even fallen from the skies within 2 miles of the station. This was the psychology of an homicidal crowd: ‘every man for himself’.

In Ghosts On The Underground, a member of staff at Bethnal Green station recalls hearing screams of women and children coming from the platforms, but I think the event that created the alleged haunting is far more sinister: what can happen if you’re caught amongst a crowd of people all trying to save themselves.

Soon after the programme I went down to the station to see if I could find a commemoration. There is a relatively small  plaque over the south east entrance which you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. In hindsight, this seems to mirror the attitude of the inquiry after the tragedy, which was hampered by having to remain almost secret, lest ‘the enemy’ find out and exploit panicking crowd psychology to their advantage.

Hal Ashby, one of the great but underrated Hollywood editors described the art and craft of editing as “…the perfect place to examine everything…everything is channeled down into that strip of film, from the writing to how it’s staged, to the director and the actors. And you have the chance to run it back and forth a lot of times, and ask questions of it – why do I like this? Why don’t I like this?”. Editing in Ashby’s broad definition, is the process of subjective scrutiny coupled with the potential to sculpt narrative arc, to forge a coherent path through a story; the editor acts as an unseen storyteller with the final elements of a film’s production at their fingertips. To put it more succinctly, Walter Murch, editor (and sound designer) for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Apocalypse Now once proclaimed that “editing could just as easily be called film construction”. Edits should be subtle or invisible: perfect links in stories without ever drawing attention to themselves. There are exceptions of course: Ray Lovejoy’s (or possibly Kubrick’s) famous jump-cut from prehistoric man’s first piece of technology to the grand technology of space travel in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Hugh A. Robertson’s stylish editing on Midnight Cowboy.

The point is, everything needs an edit. We edit our lives all the time. We edit what we say before we say it. Some people are better at that than others. A good edit is important. Online, where many things are perpetually in “beta”, where many things are apparently just a stream of consciousness; where newspaper clippings are riddled with typos, blogs have unchecked facts and photographs are emptied off a camera onto Flickr, is the art of reviewing, editing and crafting finished works under threat in an attempt to keep up with the pace?

I wonder because I’m prone to haste and impatience myself. Generally getting something finished is such a painful process – putting the “final touches” to something. But that’s probably why its the most important part of doing anything. Its the stage of creating something I should make more time for but never seem to. The perfect place to examine everything, the chance to run it back and forth and ask questions.

This has been inspired mainly by Thorsten’s post on the HPLL blog about his morning bus journey (on which I originally wrote this post as a comment), but it also ties in to some nostalgia from now being away from London for 7 months. Because amongst many things I miss of London, one non-person thing is, bizarrely, the Tube. I didn’t actually use it all that often in the last couple of years before I left but for some time, particularly when I lived over in Barnes, Hammersmith, I relied heavily on the Tube for getting to work in Old Street.

Despite being horrendously overpriced, I have quite an affection for the London Underground. I think because its so old: running on WWII technology and how it floods in heavy rain. Its so amazing that various parts of it were used as a huge bomb shelter in the wars. I’m forever impressed by the complicated yet grand, iconic status of the Tube map. I even love the strangely muted acrid stench underground, the mild claustrophobia, the dirt, the mice on the tracks, the sense of Victorian ghosts wandering silently about. I love that wild howl the trains make in the tunnels and the fact that some of them bounce about like old roller coasters. I can very easily remember the taste of the hot air rushing in through an open window in summer. There is no feeling quite like being alone on an underground platform late at night. But mostly I love the fact that being down underneath the Big Smoke reminds me of everything above it and all the experiences I have had there, and will again!’s

Type any future date into Wikipedia and you will find out what is going to happen.

From the Wikipedia entry on 2010: “According to David Crystal, author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, the change of pronunciation to “twenty X” will occur in 2011, as “twenty eleven”, explaining that the way people pronounce years depends on rhythm, rather than logic. Crystal claims that the rhythm or “flow” of “two thousand (and) ten”, beats that of “twenty ten”, but the flow of “twenty eleven” beats “two thousand (and) eleven”.”

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Even if you’re not a writer, these are good rules to simply judge a book by.

Romance cannot be dead because in the modern age it is for sale. That’s not a euphemism for prostitution, but a point about the high streets of the western world. Some point out the shallow nature of Valentine’s Day, but then we all go through with the charade anyway, just like Christmas. So there must be something in it?

Bizarrely, in the midst of an economic downturn, a news channel broadcasts a report titled “Valentines On A Budget”, giving couples genuine cheap date advice like “taking a walk on the beach”, “eating a romantic dinner at home” and “cuddling,  or more!”. Apparently, idyllic symbols of antiquated romance are now something to rely on when your wallet is empty. Ordinarily then, to be a romantic on Valentine’s Day – or any other day – you must have the money to afford a restaurant dinner-for-two; the exotic flowers; the cinema; the wild weekend abroad. The commodification of romantic love is perhaps inevitable: we spend money on ourselves by purchasing clothes, perfumes and other accessories, cultivating what we deem to be an attractive proposition, in preparation to attract and be loved by someone else.

It seems that whatever once constituted “romance”, and the public imagination of it, has been permeated by modern living and is mixed into public consciousness with historic ideals from classical novels and chocolate box costume dramas. “Saying it with flowers” still thrives every February 14th, but the Victorian art of floriography – the language of flowers – has wilted.  The giving of a red rose has survived to imply passionate love perhaps, but the coded message of “fidelity” inscribed in an ivy is long gone.

Technology and industry have transformed romance and the “love space” for us. Cinemas, nightclubs, restaurants and holiday resorts have increasingly become private places perfect for being together, at a price. A prime example is the car. Few teenage rom-coms exist without some obligatory “making out in the car” – scenes of “romance” which reach far back into American cinema. There is also J.G. Ballard’s more extreme interpretation of the relationship between sex and the automobile in Crash, though perhaps not an ideal that fits into most people’s idea of romance.

So what is it? For the philosopher Robert Solomon, love is a changable emotion like happiness or anger, but the modern conception of “romantic love” is a western construction built by capitalism. Modern romance is the pursuit of individuals with money, essentially, despite there seeming not to be much “essence” to it.

Why is it so satisfying to get a really good quality free download from the internet? There is a genuine feeling of contentment in having received something from someone who has taken the time to produce an excellent piece of work which you are perfectly welcome and actively encouraged to take. Not only that, but you are encouraged to share it with others if you feel like it. You can download it to your computer and keep it for later or put it on your MP3 player. You can copy it to your USB stick and take it to work. Its yours now and it has affected you in such a personal way that when that someone produces their next piece of work, you want it because you like it and you like the feeling. Essentially, because you recognise the feeling of being given a gift.

The popularity of any publicly distributed RSS feed, download or podcast is determined by many things but it is the fact that it is free that will determine whether someone will treat it as a “gift” and not a “reward” (for having paid for it). This is a fundamental distinction in the online culture of feed subscription, the feelings downloads generate for people and the effect that has on their desire to subscribe to things that not only have a level of value and quality for them, but are interpreted as “gifts” from other people.

Hobbies and interests or “free time projects” which make their way online in the form of free downloads for other people – things like making music, recording spoken word, writing, photography – generate pleasure for both the creator and the (online) recipient particularly because they are not commodified; they are free and they form part of a “gift economy” where people are trading in passtimes and leisure and perhaps, in some cases, in what has traditionally been defined as “art”. People are beginning to realise the non-payment need for this “art” with its propensity to just be enjoyed without subscribing to the acquisition of anything and they are enjoying the benefits of them, and the feelings they generate. It is genuinely philanthropic.

Kate Soper has developed a theory called Alternative Hedonism which, amongst other ideas, tackles the problem of how a post-consumerist society can get as much, and more, from life as we do now by addressing our needs beyond the self-satisfaction of simply buying things for ourselves with the money we earn. How we can enjoy things in life without having to always buy them. It is a “gift-culture” which serves this theory well, and in my opinion, free downloads are an extremely good example.

There is a similar theme of traversing the great oceans in both the children’s animated feature film Finding Nemo and in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (Nemo was also the name of the captain in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea). The original myth they stem from is Homer’s Odyssey and at one point in the Odyssey, Odysseus is asked his name by the Cyclops Polyphemus – to which he replies “Nemo” which, incidentally, translates to “nobody”. Another classic story which seems to serve a use for the plot is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, from the fact that there is a sequence in Finding Nemo where two characters are swallowed by a whale.

The constant reappearance of mythology and folklore in popular culture is abundant. The Greek myth of Prometheus was modernised in both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. And Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus makes a long, arduous, heroic journey back from exile, seems to pervade many popular modern journey films like Finding Nemo, Lord Of The Rings and The Wizard Of Oz. The latter few are interesting because of their particular appeal to children. George Lucas based the language, symbols and metaphors in Star Wars almost entirely on the findings of Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. In the book, Campbell argued that myths from all over the world contain stories about a hero who embodies the most valued qualities of a society, and that hero almost always embarks on a journey, separated from family, on a quest for knowledge, a magical object or vision. They meet a mentor along the way and make friends with others who protect them, all of whom ultimately help them achieve their goal.

I read a lot about Jim Henson once; his rise to fame with Ralph (the piano playing puppet dog) and the subsequent creation of the rest of the Muppet cast. What isn’t written about very often is Henson’s brief foray into some ’serious’ work in the 1960’s. The Cube is a made-for-TV drama written by Henson, which aired in 1969 on NBC. Seemingly influenced by existentialist ideas of loneliness and of reality versus illusion, a man trapped in a white box shaped room experiences strange phenomena. The Cube bears some similarity to Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit in its portrayal of a man in a kind of purgatory.

Henson’s serious streak away from the Muppets didn’t last long, but being a philanthropist, his inclusion of strong, positive, thematic elements in his work was continuous. Fraggle Rock, for example, was intended to portray different races of creatures all attempting to live in harmony. The Fraggles would occasionally make a perilous pilgrimage to a talking Trash Heap too, which now, as an adult, makes me think of the ancient Greeks making pilgrimages to the Oracle at Delphi for advice. Henson clearly had ideas about the complex web which holds a story together – something that Truman Capote described as “…the grand overall design, the great demanding arc of beginning-middle-end”. Perhaps he too was a fan of Joseph Campbell, and the roots that lie in myths, fairytales and the language they use.

The road continued straight ahead of us as the bus was blocked, coming to a standstill in front of a simple red and white barrier which denoted an edge, a border, a point where this place was about to end. All around us were plants, trees and bushes, and the sounds of animals amongst them. We alighted the bus and our passports were stamped: an official mark to recognise our exit, and with that, we were politically gone. We got back on the bus and drove two hundred metres through the space between spaces; no man’s land. We got off the bus once more, blocked by another barrier, had our passports stamped again and were officially administrated into a new land with a different name and a different language. And that was that.

The land between the two borders appeared to be identical to the space on either side of it, despite my knowledge to the contrary. There were no natural marks on the ground to mark out any crossing points; no lines in the sand; nor did the animals sound any different.

What is it to be inbetween places, to be neither here nor there, neither one thing or another? A sliding scale of grey exists between black and white, but at what point – and where – does white cease to be white and become black? It is only by creating a border, by drawing a line in the sand, that we can differentiate one thing from another. But how do we define the gap between those things?

It is only on a map you can see the boundaries of a country – where its inhabitants have decided a place must end so another can begin. From an aeroplane window, or a car or a boat, there is nothing of the sort – no huge dotted line on the ground – just the perception that something has changed; you leave one culture and are greeted by another. Maps are definitions of territory, they are just lines in sand. But in the space between those lines, like the darkness between the frames of a movie, or the space between black and white, there is uncharted territory.