Conceptual art: what's the point?

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
A girl I knew who worked in a factory workshop for a fairly high profile guy said it's pretty much the norm now. He was selling pieces to people like Elton John etc. When she left after working for him a good few years, he gifted her a painting - which she'd done herself. He just signed it
I can understand how this was cool and new and daring when Warhol pioneered mass-produced art in the 60s, but these days how is it anything other than profoundly cynical and depressing?
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
so either his paintings are very easy to make or the girl is very skilled?

She was very skilled. That's the way it works. You go to the schools, skim off the creme de la and pay them well to do all the work and make you seem like the genius you believe you are. All it takes is lots of money. This guy was a Saudi Prince known for his lavish parties. One day on a whim he just decided to be an artist.

She said she never worked so hard as on the one he was gifting her lol.

@Mr. Tea pretty much!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I bet his signature was massive and went straight across the bit that had taken her the longest to do.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Tbf a lot of famous artists from the Renaissance on had apprentices and often did only bits and pieces of the actual painting (although they'd have supplied the design, ofc, and directed the apprentices painting it).


I watched this lately, on Amazon Prime maybe, and it thoroughly depressed me about the entanglement of art and finance. Tale as old as time, I suppose, but whereas religious art, for example, was valued for its creation of a spectacle which would amaze and transport ordinary people (or other people anyway) - as propaganda for the church, but necessarily capitalising and drawing on real emotions - the modern art which billionaires snap up often seems more like a cheap trick, designed to tickle somebody's sense of irony and then furnish a skyscraper lobby.

This isn't the artists fault or intention. More reflective of the sort of rather shallow and inane "meaning" which the billionaire class can very comfortably live with.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
But then, I shouldn't deny that these artworks could mean something to somebody else (including the artist) and stir great emotions in them.

What I have about the modern art is a sense of suspicion. Perhaps that's the point? I suspect myself for liking or disliking something. Am I being credulous, or ignorant?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
@IdleRich owns a polystyrene foam coffee cup that was signed by, oh I dunno, Gavin Turk or Damien Hirst or someone like that. Have you had it valued lately, Rich?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
@Corpsey - yeah I was thinking about how most of a painting "by" Raphael or Titian or whoever was done by apprentices, but they still composed the painting and did the faces of the main figures. Just paying someone to do a painting and then putting your signature over the top is a whole other level.
 

catalog

Well-known member
There's a story in the Hirst book by Gordon burn that is sort of similar to pattys, where a woman who does his spot paintings for him (so the ones where its dots of colour) leaves the studio and he says to her 'what do you want as a leaving present' and she asks for one of the paintings. He refuses, and his justification is that she would just sell it. I think he asks her this and is unconvinced by her answer, or doesn't believe her. I mean, I think that could be seen as harsh, but on the other hand, I sort of see where he's coming from. With conceptual art, it's all in the idea, so you can expect people to be protective of that.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Idea for a scene in a satirical novel/movie: our Saudi prince sells a painting that "he" has done for a vast sum, and is interviewed by the arts correspondent for the Guardian/Le Monde/NYT or whatever. The interviewer asks penetrating questions about the amazingly allegorical, skilfully executed painting, which our prince obviously knows nothing about. The artist is watching the live stream of the interview, waiting for him to fuck it up and make himself look like a total dickhead. But the guy's responses are suitably vague and meaningless, and peppered with lingo picked up while he did a vanity degree at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, that he is hailed as a genius not only of art but also of art theory and the economics of the art world, much to the chagrin of the artist.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I can see having a team to work on large sculptures or installations. Richard Serra sure as hell ain't gonna be fabricating any enormous arching slabs of steel on his own. it becomes more questionable when it comes to painting.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I suppose there's always a degree of wanting to see the product of a single imagination rather than a "committee" in a gallery.

And when we recognise an individual imagination (concurrent with an individual style) we're particularly gratified by it. Van Gogh. Picasso. Blake. Etc. I suppose because it exalts the self to know how individual a self can be? I don't know.

But the way something is physically produced, while important, isn't quite as important as what's produced, right?

By which I mean, to state the fucking obvious, I don't mind an artist farming out work to others if the art this production line produces isn't unstimulating.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Ironically, the worship of the individual artist presumably set the ground for the worship of subjectivity and indeterminacy which can (if cunningly employed) justify anything whatsoever in modern art galleries. Including Credit Suesse.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Feels nice adopting the certitudinal note of a pompous professor or true believer. I notice my previous post is lacerated at the ankles by constant expressions of doubt and relativism.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I can see having a team to work on large sculptures or installations. Richard Serra sure as hell ain't gonna be fabricating any enormous arching slabs of steel on his own. it becomes more questionable when it comes to painting.
Oh I dunno, I heard Anish Kapoor is a dab hand with a rivet gun.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I suppose there's always a degree of wanting to see the product of a single imagination rather than a "committee" in a gallery.

it could be argued, though, that a work by Koons and Hirst IS in fact a product of a single imagination (theirs) which is executed by workers (the "committee").
 

Leo

Well-known member
they come up with the idea and exact specs on how they want it to appear, and then a group of artisans handle the execution of the idea, in accordance to the specs provided.
 
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