Why Claire Bishop's 'Digital Divide' is a Storm in a Teacup

response to Claire Bishop's Artforum article, which asks why mainstream contemporary artists have, in general, ignored the impact of the digital in contemporary life.[1]

I also address the annoying habit in journalism of titling an article 'Why...' and then not answering the question anywhere in the article. Here, I'll say nothing at all that's not a direct response to the question in my title, making the bulk of my article a matter of inference:

- Because Bishop never unambiguously states her own position in relation to the proper - or authentic - concerns of art, making it hard to understand her central point;
- Because it's harder for Bishop to say what "the mainstream" is than what "the digital" is;
- and that's weird;
- Because if Bishop's mainstream is the art world legitimised through trade, then it is obvious that it is no more capable of assimilating (capitalising) the digital than are the music, film or publishing industries;
- so there's no mystery;
- Because, if mainstream contemporary artists are those interested in selling objects, then... (see previous two points);
- Because artistic practitioners of many kinds have acknowledged and worked with the digital ever since the emergence of the digital;
- Because the social world has already assimilated the digital in more complex terms than those that would inform any mainstream artist's perspective on it.

[1] Digital Divide: Claire Bishop on contemporary art and new media http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201207&id=31944

What Happened to Art Schools? An Accidental Manifesto.

n his blog post "A sick landscape and black holes"[1] Steve Dutton worries about the purpose of art schools today. He's a contemporary of mine. We remember art schools when they were different.

Dutton relates a conversation with a student who has been censured for stating that landscape can be 'sick'. The student has presented for discussion the following quotation from Jean Baudrillard's 'Between Difference and Singularity':

We can oppose this paradigm of the totality of globalisation, where all differences must be integrated, but as differences, not singularities... you must create your own underground, because now there's no more underground, no more avant-garde, no more marginality. You can create your personal underground, your own black hole, your own singularity.

I once enjoyed Baudrillard, but I now find that the only way to take statements like this one is as a kind of language mash-up, for in what knowledge field can a 'singularities' and 'black holes' (from astrophysics) be close to a 'personal underground'? If these terms are here meant as metaphors, then they cannot be strong ones if the author ignores or misappropriates the ideas that gave them legitimacy in the first place.

Obviously, I've become more concerned with the sense of such writing than with its power of affect. I'm struggling to understand how creating something akin to a singularity or a black hole (in which all matter is torn apart) can counter the homogenisation of society hinted at by Baudrillard.

Are we to take Baudrillard's "marginality" and "underground-ness" to imply the enjoyment of a high degree of personal sovereignty? I sympathise with his tone of disenchantment when I remember that, today, extremes of personal sovereignty are tolerated especially when their outcomes can be monetised. It sometimes seems that we're driving towards a point where this, alone, legitimates artistic (and academic) pursuits.

But now I'm one move short of thinking that Baudrillard's invocation to 'create your personal underground' is not particularly courageous; because in places where the sharing of supposedly radical ideas brings no social or economic benefit (for example, away from the well-defended academic centres), the corollary of residing in a personal underground is alienation and poverty...

It feels as if the question "what happened to art schools?" has become "what has happened to me?" Is my scepticism around Baudrillard a sign that I have changed in ways which align me with today's economic orthodoxy?

The art school I remember was a micro-society in which quite extreme forms of personal sovereignty could be enjoyed without alienation, and without the necessity for economic success. Can I defend the art school of my youth, and the public funding of students' time there? To the last question I can say "yes". I'll go further:

Art school should be compulsory for everyone, because a period of exaggerated personal sovereignty in a self-regulating micro-society is a good thing. Everyone should go to art school for one year at state expense. Further to that, agents of the private art world should fund the continuing education of those they wish to prepare for commercial success.

This, I think, would rebalance in a widely acceptable way the costs and benefits of art in public and private realms, including allowing everyone to have a taste of their own personal underground.

[1] http://duttsville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/sick-landscape-and-black-holes.html

A Modest Proposal (For Preventing the Contemporary Art of Britain from Being a Burden to the Country, and for Making it Beneficial to the Public). [1]

he proposal needs further research, but here are some foundational elements:

1) Levy a tax on any artwork sold in the London art market that has been produced by an ex-student of a publicly-funded UK art school. The tax could start at 50% of sale price and reduce by 5% per year, calculated from the date the artist in question left art school; a kind of social "droit de suite".
2) Sell Anthony D'Offay's art back to him. Suggest that he reaffirm the preeminence of his collector's nous by saving his collection from the (now impoverished) state, paying back what he took in cash (£26 million) and tax relief (£14 million).[2] This may not be much in the face of the national deficit, but would be an important symbol of the private art world's solidarity with the country in time of difficulty.
3) Don't pay for the upkeep of Charles Saatchi's art collection. Do ask him to pay the state an annual fee for this service, should it be rendered.[3]
3a) Don't forget that there might be a hidden agenda behind Saatchi's rhetorical sorties.[4]
4) Each year, offer unsold artworks from the Frieze Art Fair free to people on Jobseeker's Allowance (or equivalent) in Greater London, Merseyside, Tyneside, Strathclyde, etc,* as tokens of the British art world's solidarity with the people of Britain.
5) Put any money gleaned by these means into an endowment for public-sector art venues and events.
*Other regions may apply.

[1] http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
[2] Tim Adams, 'Anthony D'Offay. Portrait of the Perfect Dealer', Observer,2 March 2008,p.47. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/02/artnews.anthonydoffay
[3] Adrian Searle, 'Saatchi Gallery: Nice gift Charles, but what now?', Guardian 1 July 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/01/saatchi-gallery-museum-contemporary-art
[4] Saatchi: 'You have to build the national collection around art that is by definition validated – and more expensive. [We are left with] an inadequate national collection of our great artists – not enough prime Hockney, Freud, Bacon, Auerbach, not a good collection of British Kitchen Sink painters, or British Pop Art pioneers, like Hamilton, and a weak group of works by the YBA generation.' [Just pop in that last one, then.] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/14/turner-legacy-charles-saatchi

The Rewards of Art

response to the article: New Data Reveals Artists Aren’t Gettin’ Paid by Alexis Clements.[1] The article address the economic condition of contemporary artists, but behind that lies a lot of complexity involving history, tradition, sociality and economics. It is tricky to pick apart the relationships between the agents in any so-called art world (especially their more closely-guarded mutualities), but making a few key distinctions can help.

One important distinction is between primary artistic producers and those who create intellectual cultures and publicity-created cultures around artistic production. Another is between public and private art worlds. Making such distinctions can help clarify what passes back and forth through the semi-permeable divisions of a sectorised art world. It's different, of course, at different junctures in the many kinds of transaction around artistic practices and products. There are multiple currencies, suited to different contingencies, including: aesthetic pleasure; real or symbolic knowledge of the world at large; knowledge of and about art; money; payment-in-kind; social status; etc.

As one responder to Clements's article suggests, what is often casually referred to as an art world is usually a diverse field with disciplinary, academic, social, and economic aspects (at least). Artists, especially today, can occupy multiple roles in such a field, and so be implicated in perpetuating as well as resisting its economic inequities. However, it does seem that artists are often disadvantaged primary producers in their own fields. For any advancement they must to appeal to the often contradictory values of a variety of other art-world agents. What unites these - curators, dealers, academics, etc. - is a reliance on the primary products of the artist; and the fact that, as aggregators and mediators of that product, they end up occupying positions more economically or socially assured than that of the typical artist. 

[1]  http://hyperallergic.com/50226/new-data-reveals-artists-arent-gettin-paid