Clowns or Hermits, What Will it Be?

The second installment of our discussion round On attitudes to form and so on, once again moderated by former gellery owners Patricia Köstring and Stephan Maier, featured art crtic Hans-Joachim Müller and the question how art criticism worked then, and how it does now.

It was quickly assessed that in fact it doesn't really play a role any more, on the one hand because there's no space in the papers any more for a profound critique and the people discussing art don't have the kowledge any more to really give a detailed criticism, and on the other hand because the sucess of artists that are endorsed by the international art community doesn't stand or fall with anybodies opinion any more. Actually, there isn't even any discussion any more if something is art or not. "There's no more big fights over art any more. I find it boring to savage works of art but it's euqally bring that all discussion has disappeared."

"Today, the art world works like this: There's three circles." he goes on to explain. "First, the so-called display art where an artist like Meese works in, making  spectacle out of himself over a period of time, giving the audience the crazy artist that steps outside of societies boundaries and makes art accessible for them." Sharper tongues could say he's bleeing the meaning out of art, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt here. The second circle consists of artists that follow their artistic calling for decades, unperterturbed by hypes coming and going, that also branch out into teaching and making art in public space. And then there's the third circle that is made up of local artists, undiscovered by a broad public, that produce great works in their often remote areas. Some of them might toy with the idea of moving to a bigger city to gain limelight, but then decide against because they work and live well exactly where they are.

Hans-Joachim Müller would have also been an interesting guest for our global art forum, as he says global art only works in the first circle, the artists putting themselves on display, but is utter nonsense in the other two.

He's not a friend of "making it" through scandal, either. "It's interesting to see how artists intentionally provoke scandals to get their careers off the ground but I find it tedious to write about them." He goes on to state that now that art critique has become obsolete, he finds it most interesting to go to remote areas and discover the fantastic artists there. Maybe we should follow his lead and find some hidden treasures instead of fawning over the same 10 people as the rest of our big, diverse planet that seems to have shrunk so much over the last decades. [mp]