100% Orange
Where do you put your art for sale? In a gallery? In a shop? On the Internet? I’m worried now that I have taken to the belief that art is art because the artist (and the gallerist and the critic) says so. I really don’t want to be that person, because I want art to be different, special. To be distinctly and uniquely art. I get the “aura” argument, I really do. That there is something special about a work because it has been “touched” by the artist, no matter how tangentially. This is important. But it’s still a stretch in my mind to accept as being art anything that’s put in a gallery or a museum just because I am told it is. Intention is one thing, acceptance is quite another.
And so I find myself on a windy night, the last Thursday in January, with fewer options for art than normal. No new openings. No cava. No point, hardly. So I pop into a new shop which has opened on Consell de Cent, “Kare”. And we are greeted by a life sized cartoon bowing figure, and enticed further in by the prospect of shiny things and fun furniture. This is, to be sure, a shop not a gallery. Trendy metal and distressed wood tables and sideboards. Funky (does anyone use that word any more?) money boxes and mirrors and clocks. Sofas which are better to look at than sit on. Obvious influences from Pop Art (hang on, isn’t that a bit too circular, Pop Art having come already from the consumer experience?), and from Hipster culture (too many french bulldogs?), create a space in which you can’t help but smile. Knowingly. You’re one of the cool kids. Ironically. You’ve accepted the cool kids’ style even though you really want to be avant garde (post-post-modern, relationally aestheticised?).
This is furniture and furnishings and wedding gifts that will last six years. Before we have to chuck it all out and redecorate. Or just move out because the relationship is over. Or the dog has died. There’s nothing here to hate, and some of it is so truly kitch you want to become a porn star to justify buying it. But I’m a starving artist so I buy a dishwasher safe mug (it’s mostly orange, with “100% Orange” printed on it) and head on next door to Ámbit gallery. A double show of “Afinitats” between the Japanese paintings of Hiroko Otake and the Italian porcelain of Paola Masi. I like to go blind into a gallery, so it took me a while to realise that the affinities were not by the same artist. I suppose it was pretty obvious, as although the pieces had been grouped together, the groups felt uncomfortable, jarring even. Once I’d realised my mistake, I relaxed a little, safe in the knowledge that this wasn’t a deliberate ploy by the artist to make me angry (art is about feelings, even anger, no?) and just a bad juxtaposition by the gallerist. There was no affinity between the pieces. Reading the blurb later, I realised my mistake. The two artists had worked together, here in Barcelona, sharing their cultural and artistic ideas to produced these works. Apparently.
The paintings looked like bad frontispieces for children’s books. Roses and butterflies crammed onto a washed background. No space to breathe, no life. Just the appearance of a repetitive stamp, with no regard for space, form, composition. As if a kid was maybe trying to do a floral tribute to Pop Art’s repetition, but before the teacher was able to whip the work away. The kid just carried on regardless. Some of the pieces might have worked well as the cover of a nice notebook that your great aunt might give you for Christmas. Others would have been fine on that wall of paintings you have in the dining room, the ones that give your dinner guests the impression that you’re an art collector, but fortunately you’re a great cook and the conversation never strays to your art.
The porcelain jars and vases fared no better, being stylistically the kind of thing my mother would have bought (did buy) in the 1980s. For sure, some of the forms were interesting, the works were delicate. But art? Do they demand that I look at them? And look at them again? Do they make me feel, heighten my awareness, even make me think? Not at all. I wouldn’t object at all if these were objects to put flowers in, to serve pre-dinner olives, or stash the coins from your pocket when you get in from a hard day at the office. But when one small bowl costs the same as a whole sideboard from Kare next door, I’m happy to say I’d go for the more practical solution.
So we return to the age old question (an age being 150 years, maybe?) and wonder what makes something art. Is it just the artist’s intention? Is it useful at all? Is it decorative? Is it meaningful? Does it speak to the human condition? For some, the answers to those questions satisfy their need to classify something as art. As not art.
But I have a new feeling about this. The question shouldn’t be “Is this art?” but rather, “How much is it art?” Can’t art be on a sliding scale? Can’t I be happy with a work which is say, 80% art, or 40% art? Just because I’m told it’s art, when I can clearly see it’s not, does that stop me from any engagement at all?
I’m happy to use my “100% Orange” mug, even though it’s 15% white and 5% black print. I’ll drink my early morning tea from it, safe in the knowledge that it is making me feel content with my lot. That it brightens my day. What more can I ask?
