Red Fragments ~ Propositions for an Uncertain Future - Melbourne City Square: Photo Julie Clarke 2010When I arrived at 9.43 am this morning it was literally red fragments I saw. These rectangular panels, part of a larger work which is intended to address '... the relationship between art, global warming and the planet's changing climate...' were not yet installed. Workmen leaning on a steel barricade told me they were waiting to hear from the artist as to whether the screws they'd chosen were suitable. The controversial plaque, which describes the contents of the red paintings was not there ~ I looked for it ~ apparently it lists the red paint as imbued with:
- Blood from a dead baby in the Congo
- Blood from a dead teenager decapitated by neo-Nazis in Sweden
- Blood from a dead dog starved to death in a gallery in Honduras
- Blood from a dead baby seal clubbed to death in Greenland
- Blood from a dead Tasmanian Forrester kangaroo killed by a car in Australia
- Blood from a dead migrant bird killed for fun in Italy
- Blood from a dead baby in Haiti
(There are actually 10 on the list, but I haven't yet found out what the other three are, when I do I'll add to list)
The list suggests that it is human behavior rather than 'global warming' that is the issue here. As far as I'm aware changing temperatures don't cause neo-Nazis to decapitate people (even though there is a widely held belief that there is a relationship between madness and the full moon) or seal-hunters to use barbaric tactics to kill helpless seals. Climate change doesn't cause individuals to kill birds for fun, nor does it cause war, hunger, disease and death of Congolese or Haitians. Yes, the earthquake in Haiti this year caused an immense amount of destruction and brought with it disease and death, but is there any real evidence that climate change can cause earthquakes? OK, I'll probably go and have a look at the completed installation, but really, I think I've said everything that I want to say about this artwork.
I'm not into the idea of art that 'adresses X'.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the reason the lower and middle-classes were mocked in previous centuries precisely for believing that art was a means of improving or of educating themselves.
Now we have this, educational art. It's what Tom Wolfe discussed in The Painted Word, art as text, essentially, or as demonstrating a text. After all, you could take away the 'piece' and just pin the description to the wall and I don't see any genuine difference.
If the 'blood' is actually simply paint and the provocation is all down to the text used to describe a certain quantity of red paint, then that would be slightly more interesting, as a comment on the hysterical reaction to labels rather than essences.
I do see a difference between the artwork itself and the text that accompanies it.
ReplyDeleteWithout an explanation of the work those who witness it would react solely to its aesthetic value ~ a red wall, made up of a grid of painted panels that contains slight variations of red color throughout.
Given that the color red is associated with blood, trauma, danger, death/child-birth, hazard, warning, fire, destruction,etc. then this in itself might have be enough of a message about 'global warming'. Perhaps the artist sees global waming as apocalyptic. He may have thought it necessary to inbue the work with real blood ~ making the artwork more bodily at a time when everything is simulacrum. And I get this, because many of the devastating events that have occurred in the world, earthquakes, floods, drought, war, terrorists attacks are mediated through the virtual realm (television, DVD's, the Internet)creating a screen or barrier between lived experience and what often appears as fantasy space. Reality rendered as unreal.
So, presenting an artwork, which stresses material/physical reality on a large scale has to be applauded for its potential to be confronting. However, without the accompanying text I don't believe that this is what will occur. Most (uninformed) people walking pass the installation will just see a red wall.
"I do see a difference..."
ReplyDelete"Without an explanation of the work..."
My point was about the work being dependent upon a text. You just repeat this and then expand.
And what follows is an explanation of a particular set of reasons that might 'justify' the piece, but the method of the piece itself is a direct emulation/endorsement *of* the selfsame methods it criticises, word/image CNN, word/image large red panels. And the viewer, being given their 'information' by the absent director.
Critique and critiqued, identical.