"Pirouette" by Autonal (Moonswift, Julian & Sand) Live performance , The People's Voice December 2013
"Stained Glass Morning" by Autonal (Moonswift, Julian & Sand)) Live performance, The People's Voice December 2013
The "What Is Art"? Show, featuring Gavan Kearney
State Of The Art
Part one ("State Of The Art") is largely concerned with the process by which to the "content" (the actual work of Art) has been all but dismissed at the expense of the "context" (what the work is supposedly about), contrasting content- rich work (Mallarme. Verlaine, Debussy) to that which is all but devoid of content (Martin Creed, Michael Craig Martin). I believe the Symbolist movement to be of crucial importance to the development of Modern Art (though it has largely been overshadowed by the "realist" line; Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstraction etc) and how, through it's use of Nuance and suggestion, and it's concerns with the mythological, spiritual and even occult (Huysmans, Wilde), provided a final, if majestic, resistance to the cult of utilitarianism, materialism and, essentially- anti imaginative. I also examine how the cult of personality has been employed (with Van Gogh as an example) to present a notion of Great Art (and "true" expression) as being almost entirely painful and alienating and how this has lead to the sham anti- Art of The Turner prize fiasco and the insults of Tate Modern.
The Death Of "Cool"
Part two ("The Death Of "Cool"") continues an idea posited in the close of the first half; that our values and interests are often dictated by vanity and a sense of what we feel to be "cool". I open by examining the origins of "cool" ( a phenomena quite specific to a particular people at a particular time, and redolent with what we now recognize as "soul" and thus the embodiment of an authentic experience). In questioning how "cool" has become a byword for a nebulous, transient and entirely fake experience, I consider Norman Mailer's essay "The White Negro" (1956), from which I draw three points that I consider central to this process; 1. The more crude (or primitive) the expression, the more creditable (and "cool") it is, 2; One is at liberty to appropriate, usually with masses of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, another person's culture, 3; There is only "hip" and "square", and one must therefor ally oneself to a false and ever- changing model of being. I then look at how these points have cultivated a wholly adolescent pop culture, one entirely fixated on a vague and fake sense of rebellion, and how such a culture can only descend into increasingly nihilistic ugliness and the deleterious effects this has on both children and teenagers, not to mention adults who reject (or are no longer capable of "identifying with") a more contemplative or complex culture