What do you think of this statement about art by Marc Quinn?

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Q.: Do you find your own art shocking?

A.: "I find it exciting and thrilling, but not shocking. Everything I've done is real - it's going on in the world. But people have a filter. They accept something if it's in its place. But as soon as it's in a different context, they find it shocking.

Part of the job of the artist, as I see it, is to make people re-examine the world with fresh eyes. Sometimes, that re-examination causes a shock or a jolt, and I think that's a good thing. It means that you are reacting before you have time to intellectualise it or put your barriers up."

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=647229

This seems to me to be a very conservative take on art from a pretty well-known contemporary conceptual artist. Why should art be "real"? The subtext seems to be that art should confront its audience with "reality". My notion of art is the polar opposite, that on the one hand art is already part of reality whatever it is, already part of life and not a reflection of it. And on the other hand art's existence is changing, expanding or in some way fucking with that reality. Marc Quinn seems to be peddling the old "art is putting a mirror to the world" myth, that you can have art that is "real" or "unreal".

― Bwian Sewell, Thursday, 16 June 2005 09:54 (twenty years ago)

I didn't read it like that. Quinn says that "Part of the artist's job is..." and he talks about his own art in terms of the "real" - he isn't making prescriptive comments about all art.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 16 June 2005 09:57 (twenty years ago)

Fair point, but by pointing out that his art is "real", he's holding it up as one of its good qualities. It just seems an odd stance from an artist of his ilk.

― Bwian Sewell, Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:02 (twenty years ago)

I don't think either that there's a huge gap between recontextualising the real (what Quinn is saying) and "fucking with" it.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:05 (twenty years ago)

If his objective was purely to shock, then his realness would be under question. So, he answered the question.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:07 (twenty years ago)

xpost

I think the difference is that by recontextualising the real, what you're essentially saying is "I'm using my art to show you how life really is, once you get rid of the filters". On that view, art is a camera, it's outside life, depicing life. That's very different from saying that art is simply one of the constituent parts of the real, like shopping or fucking. We don't do those activities to reflect reality. We don't have sex with someone in order to hold up that sexual act as a mirror to life. We have sex with someone in order to add something to our lives.

― Bwian Sewell, Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:11 (twenty years ago)

"[P]eople have a filter. They accept something if it's in its place. But as soon as it's in a different context, they find it shocking."

oh for fuck's sake, do we have to go through this again?

― R Muttrique, Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:20 (twenty years ago)

Art may be a part of life like shopping or fucking, but it's also hard to escape the fact that it is more often than not representational. The relationship between the Venus de Milo and real women on the street is that the Venus de Milo is a representation of them, a reflection if you like. That may or may not be the most interesting thing about it but it's undeniable. The thing is, one of the things that are "part of life" is the ability and desire to represent (reflect), in words or pictures or whatever. That in itself is a "form of life".

― wittgenstein's one-handed brother, Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:32 (twenty years ago)

The Venus de Milo is a representation, but not in the sense of holding a mirror up to women to show what they are "really" like. It's just the opposite in fact, it's an idealization. Representation and the kind of recontextualising Quinn is talking about are not the same thing. Representation can involve totally "unreal" exaggeration, distortion etc., ie nothing at all to do with showing people what the "real world" really is.

― Bwian Sewell, Thursday, 16 June 2005 10:43 (twenty years ago)

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