Culture as commodity
Posted: 10 Aug 2010 | By: Patricia Anderson - Editor
Jean Clair argues that art has lost its cultural underpinnings and has been debased by being identified principally with a market value. This has created a "slide into banality and squalor". In brief, he suggested that when art possessed some spiritual, religious or cult origins it had significance and meaning, and when its value became solely identified with marketplace gains, that value was entirely spurious. He gives Damien Hirst's diamond-studded skull a particular drubbing: "exorbitant, scandalous, obscure".
As this issue has a particular focus on sculpture, we might like to consider the evolution of sculpted forms - small and large - and their links to fundamental human imperatives. There is little doubt that the earliest works were created with specific beliefs and ritual functions in the maker's mind - not a marketplace. We see this most clearly when we look at some of the earliest carvings from the ice age. And what were their subjects? Overwhelmingly, the female and male form and various animals. This was what ice-age people knew and understood - their own bodies and the bodies of those creatures with whom they shared the bush, the river valleys and plains. And this knowledge was expressed in carvings which embodied some dawning self-awareness, and an awareness of a world outside of themselves. These carved figurines may also have offered some talismanic protection, conferred some authority in the hunt and celebrated fecundity. And tellingly, they must also have awakened in man the pleasure in creating something with his own hands - and doing it well.
One remarkably sensitive carving, which featured in the ongoing collaboration between the British Museum and the BBC4: A History of the World in 100 Objects, is Swimming reindeer. The Museum's director Neil MacGregor asks the question: 'Why does man the toolmaker everywhere, turn into man the artist?' In this delightful work the artist has exploited the shape of the curved tusk to create a small female reindeer with a larger male behind her, both moving through water. As MacGregor observes: "It's a superbly observed piece - and it can only have been made by somebody who has spent a long time watching reindeer swimming across rivers."
The human form, animal forms and their mythical hybrids continued to galvanise the sculptor down the centuries. While sculptors like Henry Moore and Giacometti never ceased to explore the human form, many others, whether they were working in bronze, steel, marble, granite, wax or perspex, stopped looking for inspiration in the real world altogether. Naum Gabo or Alexander Calder spring to mind. In this issue we showcase a number of distinctive sculptors who are in the stables of sturdy commercial galleries and we feature an interview with one of Australia's longest stayers: Ron Robertson-Swann.
Throughout the western world, stone carvings - naturalistic and imagined hybrids - have adorned churches, cathedrals and civic buildings, but today the opportunities for the sculptor seem diminished. He or she must find private patrons, compete for public commissions and hopefully find a sympathetic art gallery to exhibit his or her offerings. The sheer scale of the works (in some cases), the time expended, the intractability of the materials and their cost make sculpture one of the most fraught arenas of the art world.
And this brings us back to the comments of the second party, Robert Hewison, who took Jean Clair to task over his complaint that 'culture' had become commodified - an instrument for economic purposes - and his narrow interpretation of 'cult' and 'culture' which, in fact, also means 'cultivation' - in the sense of assisting something to grow. Today's museums such as the Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao have replaced the cathedral as principal enshriners of art, but that is perhaps a reflection of a more secular society - a more educated society - and one that champions a more inclusive anthropological view of our world.
