1.
Too many words have been wasted on the death of art. Wasted, because no matter the word count, no matter the argument, no matter the number of rhetorical daggers one sinks into a limp corpse: someone, somewhere, has just made something, called it art, and there’s nothing your words can do about it. There is a point at which getting drunk is more productive, to which the sad, silent eyes of the alcoholic horde attest.
This is the death of art criticism. Which, again, continues – being incapable of murder, we lack the optimism of suicide – but perhaps instead of mulling over our impotence and ineptitude at grappling with the aesthetics and beauty of a thing to a level that satisfies other people, we should take a moment to look at what we do instead.
An example: I make a claim that queer art as it exists today in our European cities is, in general, a regurgitation. This is not really an aesthetic judgement. It is political.
2.
2016, Brexit, and so many words, but bare another tedious return to extract only what we want. It is a contest between two types of politics: a politics of the image that trades in “sunlit uplands,” dreams of strong, “rugged” identities, poses with a pint for the camera, and a politics of images that are worse. “Better together,” blue tick, braced, limp smile. A mouth opens, images come out.
3.
As two stars collapse to a hole, the aesthetical and political are suddenly nowhere to be seen. Ours is a mystic age. We are explorers of subterranean corridors with their obscure, ever shifting logics. The painting is not a painting at all, but ripples on the surface that speak to some secret turmoil below. The politician is not a politician, but a finger-puppet of some vast, inhuman, eldritch being beyond our sight and comprehension.
In the heaviness of all we do not know about this zone beyond what merely appears, we cry out at the failure of appearances to cover it up. There are depths without surfaces.
4.
A more tangible mystery: in the museum city of Florence – a place that dreams of being not only a place, but a time, forever – a great mouth is erected on a central church that transforms it into a giant, sad face.
As far as media, blogs, comments and politics is concerned, it is ignored. 6 months have passed and the mouth remains without comment. Somehow, in a place in which law and culture conspire to maintain an arrested appearance, a colossal wooden face is no cause of concern.
5.
If art and art criticism (or art spectatorship), balls of string in hand, venture into the subterranean zone, could they make art there? Can art, in a sense, not appear at all?
When we are quite tired of the new and some overworked student accidentally pens a perfect history of early-21st century art in a thesis even her supervisor will not read, it may be observed that virtual art, internet art, VR art and subsequent arts were the attempt to do exactly this – to make an art that appears only through something else: screens, processors, LUTs, projectors, goggles that allow the wearer to see beyond. To make an art that doesn’t really appear.
Florence held the first virtual art exhibition in Italy underground. Despite the offer of free tickets for visitors to the vastly popular Donatello exhibition upstairs, it was sparsely attended. A single lonely person drifted through in the 10 minutes I spent there. In stark contrast to the effort, essays and excitement surrounding new mediums: art that does not quite appear, it would seem, is art people do not feel they need to see.
6.
What of art that appears but no one talk about? A face is just a face, it is not some inner turmoil – worse, it is political only in the simple sense. The be-faced church has been neglected and allowed to decay. The face makes it sad. No labyrinth. End of investigation. Reel in the string.
7.
Two types of art. An art that goes beyond appearance, not “just” a picture, “more than a thing,” trading in references, suggestions, alluding tos, and an art that doesn’t go beyond enough. A kind of “is that it?” Is it really just a face? The paint brush falls, words come out.
8.
In their acknowledgement of this, any good art gallery will join each painting, object or thing with a description to guide us “beyond” to the realm of intention, underground forces and hidden experience. It will betray Duchamp’s Fountain with an adorning paragraph, it will fill room 1 with so much supplementary text that the first art-thing may not appear until room 3 and it will offer audio guides and augmented-reality apps so that our smartphones will help us see further than eyes unmediated.
9.
A glimpse of the future: as augmented-reality and facial recognition become part of life, and our vision is supplemented with virtual information, each politician and public figure will be accompanied by a description. The description will be who they really are.
10.
As in art as in politics, that which appears is inconsequential. We search instead for that which hides below.