The contemporary art boom still roars away. Every public gallery I’ve been into in New York and London has plans for expansion, or has recently expanded, or both - like Tate Modern, which wants to put up a vast extension on the side of the old, also vast power station. All this extra wall and floor space round the world needs more exhibits, and more exhibits mean more purchases. Then there are developments like Charles Saatchi ‘borrowing’ the Royal Academy to show off some of his recent American purchases, prior to opening his own new, major space in Chelsea.
Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958
All manner of other exhibitions are taking place at new and old venues up and down the lands of East and West. The only fly in the ointment is that much of the work which these new cathedrals of art will contain (if Britain’s Turner Prize and other strictly contemporary manifestations are any guide) looks very shaky in quality compared to the recognised masterpieces of post-war painters and sculptors. In New York, I had a small shock looking at Three Flags by Jasper Johns and seeing when it was painted - in 1958! How old can new art be before it’s no longer new?
The point here is that the American-led explosion of new art in the immediate post-war decades set standards which are still dauntingly high. All artists need to climb on the shoulders of the giants that preceded them, but these shoulders are simply too high for today’s artists to reach - by and large. So we have a plethora of art that seeks to shock or to make polemica; ’statements’, or do anything but paint, draw or sculpt in a brilliant manner. You could describe the results as The Schlock of the New (Schlock being US slang for something of inferior quality, or shoddy merchandise).
Robert Hughes, Time magazine’s art critic, author of a real title ‘The Shock of the New’, for a great study of the real revolutionaries, has led the ranks of critics who find too much contemporary work to be more schlocking than shocking. I’ll comment more on this grave matter when I have had a chance to see the Saatchi show at the RA and the highly fashionable Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. But if a lot of bad art is being sold at good prices, then Gresham’s Law may eventually apply. The bad will debase the good, and what will all those museum curators do then?
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