The Tate Modern: a new definition of “Art”

A Guest Arts and Culture Review by Doctor Anthony Beauregard Peabody (BA Arts, MA Fine Arts, PhD Feminist Brush Theory)

Walking through the twist and turns of this hallowed gallery, you might be tempted to look around, regard the ingenious shapes and striking blobs of colour and bits of string, and loudly proclaim “are you serious, mate?”

If you’re a troglodyte, that is. But, however, you’re not some moaning, murping, whingey, artless, illiterate, soulless, blind, uneducated, lower-middle-class scum, just as I am not. And so you – just like me – would be refreshed and invigorated by the breath-taking display of modern art pieces in this fine curation: a bold and daring redefinition of what “art” really means.

Jean Helion (1904 – 1987)

My review begins - as all great reviews of timeless work do – at the beginning, with French abstractist Helion’s Abstract Composition. Skillfully thrown together in 1934 using bold oils, contrasting schemes and shapes etched using a wonky ruler, the piece is as challenging as it is beautiful. Far from the photo-realistic oil paints of a bygone era, Helion focuses his brush to devastating effect in a neo-performative critique of the Marxo-social feminine ideal. Using his mother as a model and sniffing deeply of the turpentine, Helion’s simplistic shapes remind us of a childhood era of peace, innocence, and fucking around in MSPaint drawing ovals and filling them in with that paintcan thingy. Marvellous, isn’t it?

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)

Following Helion’s genius is Mondrian’s 1935 seminal chef d’oeuvre, Compostion B. While the name might be lacking in sophistication and hidden meanings, the painting itself is not: he uses white. He uses black. He uses squares. He uses lines. To the untrained eye, it might appear a lacklustre effort – something painted when the crackpipe is empty and you have nothing to eat but dry pasta and butter. But its mastery lies in the white space. We’ll get onto white space in a bit, but rest assured that this is just the first gobsmacking example of artistic brilliance.

Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)

A too-often-heard criticism of art is the requirement for colour, innovation, technique, and “making it at least nice to look at”. However, Beuy’s impromptu oeuvre in 1974, the infamous For the lecture: ‘The Social Organism: a Work of Art’ does away with such retrogressive limitations. A frenzy of chalk and animal-like, kinda-looks-like-a-person-I-guess shapes are drawn together with furious zeal, outlining the social construction of the world and man and beasts places within that ever-shifting, complex web. It’s, like, deep.

Beuy’s profound discontentment with the limitations of conventional art – such as being able to just draw a horse that looks like a goddamn horse – are not capped at his bestial designs: his obliteration of basic writing and spelling that makes your doctor’s script look like calligraphy cement the movement’s deep revolution away from the restriction of the Old Masters.

Unknown author

This next piece is awe defined. While abstractists and modern art turns away from the sour conventions of old, this piece turns that discontentment on itself. Welding and silver-washing steel into a centrepiece, the artist scatters recreations of excrement around it. However, in a galling and audacious shunning of contemporary modern technique, the scat is not, in fact, made from his own faeces. Rather, he makes the puzzling choice of bronze. Why a modern artist would use metalwork when there is a perfectly good belly of shit inside him, ready at any moment to be couched and splattered in a glorious, counter-contemporary cascade into an oily, thick puddle of brilliance, or smeared with his own hands - perhaps mixing it with the period blood of his wife - onto a canvas, is beyond me – but his efforts are, indeed, commendable.

Ceal Floyer (1968)

Simplistic pieces that leave the audience reeling and gawping at the wall are this exhibition's forte, and no piece is no different. Since its creation in a Sainsbury’s in Holborn in June of 2009, Monochrome Till Slip has been leaving audiences gobsmacked. Using just 49 all-white items that cost about 55 pounds sterling, this 30 000-pound masterpiece challenges the viewers conception of not just colour, but value. “What is colour?” he muses; “Is white a colour?” he ponders; “Jesus, have I been binning 30 000 pounds every time I go shopping?” he queries.

Various Authors – white spaces

This aforementioned concept is a central theme in modern art. Indeed, just as famed masters of old were celebrated for producing spectacular work filled with vibrant colours, awe-inspiring figures, and bold techniques, so too do the new masters do exact the same thing just with none of that. Ellsworth Kelly’s (1923-2015) provoking 1974 creation White Curve is just one of these, but the gallery is bedecked with them: a moving tribute to the nothing. For after all, without nothing, how could there be anything? With no paint, no brush, no frame, no material, no content, is art defined in and of itself, or defined as a contrast to purity, to a null, blank nothingness? All technique can only be identified in the absence of such; and all art can only be identified in the absence of art. But then, is this now art? Does a nothing that defines a something make it, indeed, a something itself? I’m very smart. I hope you’re following.

It doesn’t end with Kelly, however: blank canvases bring negative space screaming into fruition. In one example, three blank canvasses hang side-by-side, a stunning riposte to the outmoded ideals of what constitutes a “body of works” or “portfolio”. Are they all just the same blank canvas? Or are they reinterpreted and their meanings recodeified with each subjective appraisal, “um”, “ah”, and “what the fuck is this bullshit”? These works are exquisite: a communico-performative social reconstruction that uses both negativeness and audience to reframe art as a conceptulisational referencing Jurgenialist non-adaptive recreation.

In some cases, it was just a blank wall, with a blanked-out explanation box. Bold. Simple. Beautiful. Genius.

Art as trash; trash as art

By now, many criticisms have been offered as to the value of this art. Not its literal value, as that has been established by art houses and taxpayers, but its value as an artistic project. “This is garbage,” some may cry, from their places at the trough. But this is the exact, surgeon-like accuracy of the artistic project: to challenge the hegemonic conventions of art by using a Thingymajigian approach to High-Balderdashian Obfuscationalism so as to instill an anti-traditionalist critique of the problematic oversimplification of art as “something that’s nice to look at” or “that makes us feel something”.

And they are right. Oft-times, the art is garbage. Crafted from the detritus of society and pulled from council tips, these recreations make us ask “is this really an old blanket?” and “is this really just a dirty bucket squeezed between a milk carton and a Styrofoam brick, a combination that uses elitist posturing and jargon to alienate those who don’t see the Emperor’s New Clothes?”

“What is waste, and what is wasted?” we must question. Regard this following piece:

The material is a bold choice. Flimsy and tacked together at the last minute – just like its premise – it makes the audience wonder ‘wire-we looking at this?’. Of course, the exhibit doesn’t stop there, as it is a cornerstone of modern art is to stray from cliché materials to recreate a new art.

Untitled (toilet paper, wooden floor) is one such offering. This piece, by an unknown author stops you dead in your tracks. Situated not on a wall or in a demarcated area, it breaks the boundaries of the limiting gallery context, a space beleaguered with rules and restrictions. Where you cannot touch other pieces, this sturdy construction from simple toilet paper and the artists excrement is not beset by such limitations. You can even, if you want, touch it, or rub it against your cheek – as I did, several times. A sublime challenge to demoded conventions.

This simple creation is just a fraction of a larger setpiece. Hidden in a smaller tiled exhibition space demarcated merely by traditional signs for males, females, and disabled persons, a series of miniature sculptures in porcelain, paper and steel carry this anti-conventional message to powerful new heights. By drawing on real life gender divisions in society, enforcing them on the audience, and creating a performative space that critiques human waste creation, it makes for truly puissant art.

You see, that is the Tate Modern’s true success. Walking out, the audience is left perplexed and deeply unsettled, questioning the very definition of art itself. Alas, I must admit that this is a feeling that is muted and spoiled by the curators decision to ruin the unilateral, message-laden exhibition with lackluster works by Degas, Monet and that plebiscite's abstractist, Picasso. What is this, the fucking Louvre?

9/10 stars except for the floor for Georgia O'Keeffe

Other SA towns “much shittier places to live” agree Joburg, Capetown inhabitants

Remarkable social progress has been made today, after Capetonians and Joburgers of all walks of life set aside their differences and agreed that, while both their respective cities were indeed crap places to live, Port Elizabeth (as well as thousands of other towns across South Africa) is a much more shit place to live in comparison.

The warring tribes, which have long and bitterly argued whose city is a better place to live, came together in hours-long peace talks yesterday, eventually emerging united in the belief that that “at least we don’t live in that windy craphole”.

“The history of this battle has been long and vicious,” said Cape Town Mayor Weeva Mountin, who attended the talks. “We have a dark, ugly history of pointless online flamewars and tongue-in-cheek blog posts trying to convince others - but mostly ourselves - that every city but ours is a far, far crappier place to live.”

Pictured: Joburg artist's depiction of Cape Town

“Today we’ve accepted the hard facts of the matter,” he said. "We’ve both realised that the other side is kinda right, and have accepted that our cities are in many ways shit places to live. However, we’ve also agreed that, while we might live in godless pits, at least every other place in South Africa is a much, much worse place to live, like, say, Potgeitersburg, or - Jesus - Mahikeng. God, can you imagine?”

And the cities’ citizens agree.

“We’ve been here a thousand times,” said Capetonian of two-decades, Arvie Gannipster. “Joburg is shit because it has no beaches, it has no small hipster bars that serve Thai-Eskimo fusion food, it has no art scene, and worst of all, it has no huge beautiful mountain.”

“Yes,” agreed Johannesburg resident Victor Mofcrime, “just like Capetown is a shithole because it has no lucrative financial scene, no high flashy lifestyle of clubs and women, and no stock exchange.”

“But we’ve finally come to an agreement: at least neither of us live in port Elizabeth. Or, Jesus, literally any town in fucking Kwa-zulu Natal.”

Pictured: Capetonian artist's depiction of Johannesburg

Scientists have welcomed the findings as “utterly factual and not at all biased.”

“You might think that this is just a case of Urban Cognitive Dissonance, that they’re just obliged to not hate these cities just because they live there and this brings about a warped sense of belonging,” said senior researcher at the Centre for Comparative Research, Eliza Tombself, “but in fact it’s a 100% legitimate, evidence-based claim to make. Quite simply, it's good, hard science.”

But despite the controversy, Port Elizabeth residents remain unconvinced.

“Oh come on. They're just totally jealous of our giant flag and unrivaled ore-loading facilities, not to mention our status as primary motor vehicle producer of SA and largest supplier of vulcanised rubber tyres," said Port Elizabeth Mayor Portia Harboursen.

"Yes, we may have a foul-smelling industrial stretch, incessant godawful wind and basically all the bad things of both those cities [of Cape Town and Johannesburg] in general,” she said, “but at least we don’t have e-tolls, or an economy based solely on coffee-shop takings and pretending to be an artist.”

“Besides,” he added, “I think we all know that, actually, East London is the real shithole.”

Muse and Abuse would like to state that at least we don’t live in Zimbabwe. And if you do, well, at least you don’t live in Burundi.

Artistic tendencies turn piece of crap into theatrical genius

It was a close call for local theatre production company UpStage Productions this week, after theatre critics’ and art reviews’ tendencies to obsess over themes and metatextual references made their latest show Glass Grey Sky an “insightful, profound piece that evokes a self-aware critique of postmodernism” instead of just a piece of really crap theatre with no real point or production value.

The show, which was written and directed by Arya Dzjoking and featured out-of-tune violins, out-of-sync choreography and seven instances of actors forgetting their lines, has been hailed by reviewers and physical theatre experts as “just ambiguous enough to be called ‘spectacular’”.

“To the lay man or woman, it might have looked really awful,” said reviewer and long-time Physical Theatre expert Harold Cress. “I mean, if it wasn’t for my ability to look past the flat, dead soundtrack and interpret this as a direct symbol of the paucity of life and lack of vim and vigour in the post-modern subject who inhabits an abyss of futile dreams, or my training which has prepared me to look into those expressionless, bland faces with too much make-up caked on their cheeks and read within them a scathing critique of the deadness of our Self in the modern digitalised era and our obsession with socially mediated appearances no deeper than a thimble that in no way form a meaningful representation of our true selves and beings, then it just might have been the worse, trite piece of shit of I’ve ever watched. But like I said, below the surface, it was genius.”

The show, which has purportedly gone over the heads of over seven thousand people without Dramatic Arts degrees or Arts Journalism training since its opening last weekend, will now tour the country, debuting at R150 a ticket.

“Some people have gone to see our show and been all like ‘oh, I totally didn’t get that, what the hell did I just watch?’,” said show director, producer and choreographer Sim Bolism, “but then again, what would those artless, ignorant pricks know about dance?”