Pollock believes that art is whatever you believe is art. According to him, art helps people to see the world they inhabit in a better way and to live within it more at ease.
The cult of ugliness and the cult of utility substitute beauty.
Art shows us the world as it is today, with all its imperfections.
But is it fair to call something art just because it shows us reality, including the slice of ugliness and imperfections it includes?
According to Scruton we are nowadays stuck with utilitarian values exclusively while art and beauty should be about being useless, in the same way as it goes for love and friendship.
But our consumer society puts usefulness first.
"In our culture today, the advert is more important than the work of art and artwork often tries to capture our attention as artwork do, by being outrageous. [...] Like ads today, today works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no products to sell except themselves."
"Alternative" art first caught my attention a couple of years ago when I visited a small gallery in London that exhibited shit work - literally I mean: sculptures, a lot of them, made by what I recall being a Spanish or South American artist who employs faecis and turn them into art objects. Then there was a dog by the same artist, whom he let die of starvation while calling the process "modern art".
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The Tate has just bought some William Blake hand-made pictures. The inscription for one of them, depicting a naked man clasping his head in pain as he is consumed by flames, reads: "I sought Pleasure & found Pain." My thought exactly every morning when I go to work; I wonder if I also look the same. The museum paid £441m for these pieces.
Sunday 10 January 2010
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