Art is the only area of creativity that insists that mass production lessens the credibility of the work.  ¶ 12:21 PM 0 comments

  Let's reclaim art from the realm of the art establishment. By mass producing art you can attempt to attract practically anyone, make money and survive as an artist without pandering to the tastes, fashions, preconceptions of the wealthy who are the only people able to buy modern art at the moment. By communicating directly to the public, we can relinquish the gallerist of his responsibility to art. A responsibility that he has squandered turning the art world (with a few exceptions) into an elitist activity the laughing stock of most if the rest of the population.  ¶ 12:01 PM 0 comments

 
I've just been looking at The Wooster Collective Website, which is interesting especially if you like Banksy or anti-capitalist revolution stuff. That's beside the point though because what's interesting is that on there I saw a link to The Iranian Underground Art Network. Personally I see graffiti as a campaigning tool, something you do in anger, as a protest - it has far more power and impact when the person creating it has something to say but has no where else to say it. Graffiti that I see in London frustrates me, its self indulgent and ego-ridden, people graffiti because it's part of their image and lifestyle and so the images they make a more boring than decorative tea towels. In Iran, however, they've got stuff to be seriously angry about, they have no where else to express their ideas. The images they produce document the fear and danger they go through when creating them. The image is of Sadiq Hidayat stencilled onto the walls of buildings in Tehran by an Iranian graffiti artist. Sadiq Hidayat is one of the most significant figures in Persian literature. He wrote a book called The Blind Owl, which in the present climate in Iran can be seen as revolutionary and anti Islamic. The book has lots of references to the life of Buddha and relates significantly to Zoroastrianism. Sadiq Hidayat represents an open, tolerant Iran and to paint his image on the walls of the capital city is extremely subversive and in my opinion much more interesting than Banksy's rats.  ¶ 1:10 AM 1 comments

  The mmparis exhibition at Haunch of Venison is on until 25 March. It is interesting that commercial galleries are exhibiting graphics companies - has a kind of mass production become 'high art'???  ¶ 1:07 AM 0 comments

  "While there is often a mirage of consensus in the London art world, the Paris scene remains complex, layered and critical." - This is a quote from a ICA press release that I found on the mm paris website. mm paris is a French graphic design company. I think there is an exhibition of mm paris work at The Haunch of Venison Gallery sometime in February.

The last thing I saw at the Haunch of Venison was Richard Long. He frustrates me. I find his work fascinating, however, the fact that he feels the need to photograph it and sell the photographs for several thousand pounds destroys the integrity of the work to such an extent that I feel that it's no longer worth looking at. Part of his work seems to be a discussion about the 'art object', but how can he legitimately talk about it when he so blatantly creates an art object purely for the market.

Another artist who frustrates me in this way is Matthew Barney; he makes elaborate, highly produced video art that he could very easily make thousands of copies and sell to every person that wanted to own it. But instead he makes only 4 copies which cost several hundred thousand dollars each. Artists and galleries try to hide behind this anti commercial, anti capitalist veil that allows them to be exclusive, inaccessible, luxury. But on the other hand I might be wrong!

Maybe this connects to the idea of activist art. If an aim of activist art is to reach as many people as possible, conventional ideas of the art object become redundant.  ¶ 1:41 PM 1 comments

  I have started reading 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' by Walter Benjamin. I took these quotes from it:

"To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose 'sense of the universal equality of things' has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from unique objects by means of reproduction."

"To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work designed for reproducibility"

Walter Benjamin is saying that changes in the modes of production would change aesthetic values of society. I think this is inherently a bourgeois view. There are many factors external to the artists which affect the aesthetic values of society. Oil paintings are valued more as 'high art' than a pencil drawing because oils are more expensive.

Art galleries have pushed the concept of the 'original' for their own capitalist motives. They can keep the art world elite - they can get more money out of people. They have rubbished the idea of mass produced art as commercial and capitalist, when in fact I think this the most revolutionary stand point.  ¶ 1:17 PM 0 comments

  I've just rediscovered Guy Debord, I bought a book about him in the ICA the other week. He's the head honcho of The Situationists. The Situationists started the May 1968 Paris Student protests and came up with the poster - 'A Youth Too Often Disturbed By The Future'

Guy Debord says this: 'The revolutionary transformation of everyday life isn't reserved to a vague future. It is immediately placed before us by the development of capitalism and its insupportable demands, the alternative being the reinforcement of modern slavery. This transformation will mark the end of all unilateral artistic expression stocked under the form of commodities, at the same time as the end of all specialized politics.'

- (look at nothingness.org)

The May 1968 protests sparked a protest in Hornsey College of Art, there was a reunion and a series of films about the Hornsey College of Art protests a few weeks ago. They tried to promote it in the Fine Art studios but apparently the guy that put the posters up was asked to take them down by some kind of authority, not good Middlesex Uni.

The Reason I mention Guy Debord is because more than anyone he makes me passionate about campaigning. My work over the next few weeks is going to reflect this.  ¶ 10:52 AM 0 comments

  The American Artist's Congress attempts to deal with the issue of politics and art. Their debates seem to conclude that politics and art cannot mix because politicians or artists use the art as propaganda. They entrap the artist into the ideologies of a particular political view and therefore stifle their artistic expression.

The American Artist's Congress conclusions to this debate - made public through 'The Partisan Review' was : "Art, like science, not only does not seek orders, but by it's very essence cannot tolerate them....Art can become a strong ally of revolution only insofar as it remains faithful to itself."

These statements led the way for artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and other abstract expressionists to be free from politics in a very political era - but in reality, did they. They became aligned with the motives of the American government as a response to the realism of the soviets. Some go as far to say that abstract expressionist art was financed by the CIA.  ¶ 10:51 AM 0 comments

  Utopia Station - Hans Ulrich Obrist - Hans Haacke,

I want to copy Hans Haacke, he has stolen my life.

Hans Haacke is probably most famous for an exhibition of his at the Guggenheim that was cancelled at the last minute at the request of the museum director. Hans Haacke photographed the slum buildings that were owned by a number of the Guggenheim board.

Hans Haacke reclaimed photography as a documentary, journalistic tool in art and at the same time re-politicized art.

Hans Haacke says this: "Today museums and comparable art institutions, like e.g. the ICA in London, belong to that group of agents in a society who have a sizeable, although not an exclusive, share, in this cultural power on the level of so-called 'high art'. Irrespective of the 'avant-garde' or 'conservative, 'rightist' or 'leftist' stance a museum might take, it is, among other things, a carrier of socio-political connotations. By the very structure of its existence, it is a political institution."

Why then should art with any kind of political stance be in an art gallery, why does it not take the form of advertising?  ¶ 10:48 AM 0 comments

  Welcome to Life Inside The Den - I study Fine Art and at the moment I am making dens that represent the way I interact with people in a certain environment. Presently I am making a den in the studio amongst all the other fine art students. I am using the den as the basis for my ideas and also the venue for the exhibition of work that I will produce over the next few weeks. This blog on the other hand shouldn't be about my work and should only reflect my work in that I will be writing about things and art that I am interested in. - This was intended to be a simple explanation of the title but has turned into a bit of a ramble that should end.  ¶ 10:47 AM 0 comments