Have you every looked at a Monet down your nose? What I mean is have you ever looked down your nose at a Monet painting? Many of us who go to galleries or live-art performances will know that this could be perceived as, the 'best' way to view art. It's cool right?
Everyone seems to be doing it, but does it really help you appreciate it? In another audience, a music concert, it may seem the done thing is to swill beer and flick your sweaty hair to understand rock or to sit straight backed and tight-lipped to enjoy an orchestra. Do we have to smoke a fat spliff and sit on a cushion with headphones to fathom Pink Floyd?
Art is fluid. It should be a fulfilling, wonderful experience no matter how you decide to ingest it.
Art is subjective. It should be discussed and debated for all time as to its merits and its flaws.
Art is life. We live it everyday whether it's a typeface, a song or a graffiti tag, so why should there be rules as to how to enjoy it?
I feel that in the 21st Century we are at a point where we've forgotten the true meaning of exhibiting art. We go and see a Shakespeare play in a completely silent theatre where even coughing is frowned upon, this isn't how it was intended. When Shakespeare wrote plays the theatre was a loud, crass environment, not unlike our stand-up comedy circuit is today. So why do we feel inclined to instil this Victorian, silent approach to theatre? In the 1920's, Antonin Artaud, the famed French theatre practitioner, wrote manifestos to try and bring the immersive and invasive aspects of theatre back to what he saw as a stale and lifeless form of performance. Unfortunately we don't seemed to have moved on much since these ideas were written, maybe because he was self-diagnosed as insane and so we treat his theories with disdain or maybe because we are becoming more and more detached from art and performance.
Despite some incredible pieces over the last few years like Cirque De Soleil's 'Della Guarda', theatre can sometimes seem a stuffy and dull style of performance. Similarly poetry is no longer something which is recited as it once was by Homer and poets are not revered as they once were. Unlike theatre however, poetry is being given new life by the wonderful Spoken-Word scene which has evolved from this and has sparked an interest in poetry again. It's this level of evolution and finding a new way to perform something that keeps the live aspect of art fresh and more disciplines need to take a step in this direction.
Fine Art is one such discipline, it has become, in the words of Grayson Perry, Turner Prize Winner, “disengaged with the real world”. Art galleries and exhibitions exude an air of snobbery and seem to have this impenetrable forcefield to normal, everyday conversations or opinions. You never seem to hear people discuss a piece of art as “It's alright but I wouldn't buy an album”, you have to use long words and stare from afar at something that you'd need to re-mortgage your house to own. Recently famous works by Picasso and Degas have failed to sell at Christie's in New York as they failed to reach their reserve of £25million. How are we as general public art lovers supposed to relate to something with that stigma? This kind of art doesn't connect with people because the manner in which it's exhibited isn't tailored to specific audiences despite most artists wanting their art to connect with people in some way.
I love going to see art, I'm not saying galleries are a bad idea or artists being paid is unfair but it's become too focused on the world of collections and investors. If you attend just a few exhibitions or visit most cities in the world it's clear we have very few spaces where art can be connected with in a way that permeates our daily lives. We need some fresh ideas on different ways of performing “fine art”. Graffiti and street art are redefining the gallery space by situating it in peoples lives and this is exactly the kind of idea we need to focus on. The internet means we all have access to famous paintings but how can we make them more than just a google image on a screen? With the advances of the Ipad and other products like Kindle we could work on ways to re-invent online galleries and have mixed media applications which allow for artists to collaborate in this way. I'd love to make a mixtape for an exhibition which allows a user to scroll through different pictures or writings on a certain theme and the possibilities just keep expanding the more you think about it.
Real world galleries need to take some bold moves, not completely away from the library like atmosphere they have at the moment but allowing for more performance to be granted to the space for certain exhibitions. The Tate Modern Turbine hall is a great example of this and look at the amount of people who visit that gallery for that reason though they'd never dream of entering the National Portrait gallery.
We shouldn't do away with the legacy of art but I do feel that we need to look back at how performance and exhibition was in the past and use all the knowledge we have to advance it. Some plays should encourage a more vibrant audience who are able to change the shape of the performance, some music gigs should move away from the standard proscenium-arch rock concert to utilise the entire venue and arrangement depending on the type of gig. The rave scene realised this in an amazing way and these type of ideas need to be re-found. Television, one of the newest art-forms in the mainstream, used to be an all singing, all dancing affair where interaction was they key to the programming. Why not bring this back? I could say that it's all the performers fault but I feel partly the blame lies with us, the audience, we are far too submissive and willing to sit quietly, why don't more of us dance around the living room when we watch X-Factor or Jools Holland? This is what used to happen, is it really too far fetched? Why do we not immerse ourselves into the performance space and allow our creativity to infuse the work we are viewing with live energy? In the words of Artaud,
“The spectator who comes to our theatre knows that he is to undergo a real operation in which not only his mind but his senses and his flesh are at stake”! Antonin Artaud – The Theatre and Its Double ISBN-10: 0802150306
Now doesn't that sound more exciting than just sitting watching Michael Bublé shout at you for a while through binoculars at Wembley Arena? Doesn't that sound more interesting than sipping cheap wine whilst faux-rich 'Hoxtonians' discuss art but forget there are words with less than 7 letters? Doesn't that sound better than feeling like a plebeian in the face of a dictatorial art-form? I don't think art can be a dictatorship and as much as we may have fallen into a routine with how we view certain disciplines there's nothing to say we can't take back performance and make it vibrant and powerful again, the most important thing is to enjoy it.
Art isn't about being dictated to, it's about being part of it. Immerse yourself in art.
