this was something i posted on a fine arts forum a while back, in a discussion about content in contemporary art. coming across it accidentally today, i concluded that i have become less coherent on the subject, not more, in the years since i wrote it - and so i stand aside for my younger, and more articulate, self:
"i'm tempted to get on my very high horse (legs a mile long) and declaim that far too much work today (whether artist-led, in a gallery, or elsewhere) seems to have little content - or perhaps, very little experiencing, feeling, exploring and risking, in it. but that kind of sweeping statement, whilst expressing my own frustration at the superficial bandwagonnism i currently perceive, isn't really very useful, since i'm sure it could've been said at any time over the last several centuries. it's entirely subjective: which is where i'm coming from, all the time and unapologetically. in other words, my reference points are personal and, like a mile-high horse, probably somewhat shaky when they come to be trotted out.
however... genuineness; authenticity: these concepts are useful currency of the imagination, because for some reason (perhaps a similar impulse to the religious one) we want to relate to art at more than eye-level. is this something to do with allowing ourselves to be caught up, and transported? something to do with venturing beyond the confinements and sufferings of mortality?
at any rate, we must surely be distrustful of anything that is trying to take us for a ride, for dubious purposes of its own. i think that there is something in us (at least, in many of us) which is searching for more than superficial answers. something which is looking to be met, to be answered (though what is the question?) and to be transported. the kind of art which has little to offer but a cynical take on modern life is not art but social commentary - interesting at that level, perhaps, but in terms of the search for meaning quite meaningless. meaning of course is another word which rests on personal interpretation, so i'm not even going to try to explain what i mean by meaning. maybe all i can say about it is that a work with meaning doesn't leave one feeling hollow and unengaged.
the moment one starts to investigate such things as genuineness, integrity, authenticity, one begins to flounder in subjectivity. these concepts cannot survive outside the story we are telling ourselves about being real. no concept means more than it can deliver in terms of reality - and there's another impossible statement! (yet take the road this points to, and it becomes the journey.)
so, is an artist genuine because their intention is genuine; fake because their intention is fake? is an artist someone who is simply that much better than others at being life's representative? its hands and voice and eyes? is an artist someone with a philosophy to peddle, an angle to grind? an obsessive driven by the need to define and recall? ah - the questions are so much more interesting than whatever answers get thrown at them that we should really be trying to ask better questions and dismissing the answers as no more than temporary, disposable containers.
as for the freedom to create... there's another imponderable to ponder. but my own response would be: nobody else, and no circumstances, ever give you the freedom to create. you take it upon yourself to be creative, and do it because you must - and if what you make then finds its way into the world, well, so be it. but if it doesn't, it isn't any the less for that. no gallery, no marketplace, no critic, no establishment, no expedient demand, no lucrative commission, no benign patron, can bestow the freedom to create; nor can any of these forbid it. we must take that on ourselves, and if we fail to recognise our creativity, we risk living lives devoid of meaning - which is a much greater tragedy than failing to be successful in worldly terms."
