U čemu je fora? Martin Creed u Hejvord galeriji
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Čemu služi ovaj oblik? Ova boja? Šta da radi ova fota? Šta se dešava ako skupimo sve na gomilu, organizujemo po veličini, pa onda stanemo i gledamo? Šta je to što vidimo? Stvari? Linije u prostoru? Nameštaj? Zgužvana loptica od papira?
Ta zgužvana loptica, trenutno deo retrospektive Martina Krida u Hejvord galeriji u Londonu, ima odličnu karijeru. Loptica (tzv. Rad 293, List papira zgužvanog u loptu) je svojevremeno bila poslata direktoru Tejta Nikolasu Seroti, koji ju je uredno vratio ispravljenu u koverti. Sada je ponovo zauzela svoje počasno mesto na sterilnoj plinti, mameći osmehe publike. Aha! To je ta loptica! Dokaz Kridove Škotske drskosti, ili ispraznosti umetničkog sveta, ili demokratije umetnosti, ili zatvor poluvekovne istorije minimalizma, kako kome odgovara. Sve zavisi od posmatrača.
A um posmatrača je elastična stvar. Anegdotski radovi, kao što je zgužvana loptica ili Svetlo koje se uključuje i isključuje koje je dobilo Tarner nagradu 2001-e, stekli su sledbenike iz raznih grupacija kojima se sviđaju Kridovi radovi (ili cene njegovu drskost), ali ne znaju da objasne zašto. Da li je to zbog toga što svojom namenskom vizuelnom i tehničkom prazninom ovi radovi služe kao ogledalo naših ideja o umetnosti? Ovo je naravno razlog što je jako jednostavno organizovati dečiju igraonicu u sklopu izložbe: sve što treba je da se deci dâ malo A4 papira, bojice, neke osnovne reči i boje. S lakoćom ćete formirati aktivnosti koje će popuniti praznine nastale oko reči Majka, na primer. Svako ima majku. Stvari. Svi znaju šta su stvari. Osećanja. Vidite o čemu je reč.
Ali o čemu je zapravo reč?
Koja je svrha akumuliranja svih ovih crteža, slika, fotografija, skulptura, objekata i kinetičkih svetlećih reklama na jednom mestu? Krid sugeriše da zbirka “reflektuje nelagodnosti sa kojima se suočavamo prilikom pravljenja izbora, udobnost koju nalazimo u ponavljanju, našu želju za kontrolom i neizbežni gubitak kontrole koji formira naše postojanje”. To zvuči kao pseudo-antropološka skica najopštijih ljudskih osobina. Pitko kao boza i podjednako mutno.
Lopte za igru, stolovi, lego kocke, crteži, kaktusi, ekseri, otisci brokola na papiru – prikupljeni, organizovani, numerisani i gradacijski složeni. To su sve ‘stvari’ bez kojih se može. Zašto su onda tu? Kao igra? Krid je omiljen kod publike, i to ne samo zato što podilazi najnižem zajedničkom denominatoru. Njegova ‘arhitektonska intervencija u prostoru’ je jedan zid od šarene cigle. Visok zid, ali samo zid oko kog obigravate jureći svoj rep. Škripa otvaranja i zatvaranja vrata (rad iz 1995): automaton koji na kratko privuče pažnju, spremi vas za reakciju koja nije potrebna. Sedam hiljada balona u zatvorenom prostoru pod grupnim nazivom Pola vazduha u datom prostoru (Rad 200) prouzrokuje kikot i sevanje iPhonima. Rad podseća na dosta sličan Ora Bolas … Alguma coisa acontece no mergulho do corpo, no horizonte, na gravidade (2005) Ernesta Neta, samo bez težine u svakom smislu. Poenta je, naizgled, proizvesti nezahtevnu laku zabavu – nešto što je samo po sebi sve više vezano za savremeni galerijski prostor.
Dok ‘ništa’ kod fluksusovaca sugeriše duhovnu ili mentalnu disciplinu, ništavilo Kridovih akumulacija ima interaktivnu, IKEA dimenziju. Gest koji prethodi i sledi svakom umetničkom delu danas egzistitra u medijski isposredovanom prostoru prenapunjenom iskalkulisanim značenjima, tako da jedino uz pomoć anemičnog nedostatka svake dubine umetnik uspeva da podrije naše isprogramirane, previše obaveštene mozgove. Što ne znači da Krid želi da išta podrije. Posle pedeset godina konceptualizma, u zemlji čije pisano stvaralaštvo daleko nadmašuje vizuelno, Krid se javlja kao savant: umetnik čiji radovi ne traže nikakvo unošenje, već deluju na nivou anegdote koja se protivi prenošenju svakog angažovanog narativa, osećaja ili informacije publici.
Pre nekoliko godina, čitajuci roman Beleške s jedne izložbe Patrika Gejla, otkrila sam uredni, tihi svet kvekera. Jedan od likova u romanu opisuje skupove Društva prijatelja (što je drugi naziv za kvekere) kao meditativne skupove bez hijerarhijskog poretka koji, makar privremeno, zaustavljaju buku i nemir spoljnog sveta. Martin Krid dolazi iz kvekerske porodice, o čemu povremeno govori. Da li se deo tog zaustavljanja stvarnosti preneo i na njegove radove? Kvekerska religijska služba je vrlo skromna. Oni obično sede skupa oko jedan sat, u čistom prostoru bez ikakvih religijskih obeležja, u potpunoj tišini koja se narušava samo ako neko ima nešto važno ili prosvetljeno da kaže. Umetnički radovi nemaju nikakvu funkciju u kvekerskom prostoru jer za njih nemaju nikakvu praktičnu ni duhovnu svrhu. Za razliku od katolika, kvekeri se retko bave ekstremnim, ilustrovanim i pozlaćenim usponima i demonskim padovima postojanja. Svetlost koja se pali i gasi im je u tom smislu sasvim dovoljna.
Da li su Kridovi radovi meditativni, smirujući? Da li se ogromni, rotirajući neonski znak koji urla MAJKE moze nazvati smirujućim? Mislim da može. Pogotovo ako svojim kretanjem skoro potpuno obuhvati ceo gornji deo galerijskog prostora, dok je donji deo ispunjen kucajućim metronomima. Postoji nesto nežno, bezbedno u ovoj intruziji prostora. Nešto što nas oslobađa od želje da razmišljamo o umetnosti kao takvoj.
Neposredno pre nego sto je Krid osvojio Turnerovu nagradu 2001. godine, kritičar Džonatan Džons ga je uporedio sa Džon Kejlom (i Ajvorom Katlerom), ali Kridova ‘verbalna partitura’ duguje mnogo više Ligetiju nego Kejlu, nekadašnjem saradniku La Monte Janga. Ligetijeva Simfonijska poema za 100 metronoma, nastala 1962-e pred kraj njegove kratke saradnje s Fluksusom, izuzetno podseća na Kridov rad Trideset devet metronoma otkucavaju vreme, po jedan u svakom tempu (Rad 112, 1995-2004). Ligetijeva kompozicija precizira stotinu metronoma navijenih da otkucavaju u različitom tempu, dok je kod Krida trideset devet. U oba slučaja instrumenti su naštimani da počnu u isto vreme i da postepeno ispadaju iz ritma, zvučno se šireći od spontano sinhronizovanih obrazaca ka prijatnoj mehaničkoj buci, nešto nalik zvuku zrikavaca. Komad se završava kada metronomi jedan po jedan utihnu.
Ovaj rad me je najzad priblizio Kridu, i to ne samo zato što volim Ligetija. Dopao mi se povratak tišini posle površnog leta kroz apsurdno. Ono što sam otkrila (možda prisećajući se Ligetija) je potpuni nedostatak ironije u načinu na koji radovi uspostavljaju vezu s publikom. Krid je art lajt, bazičan i poletan, u bojama iz obdaništa, sve neki sjajni neoni i razigrani baloni. Kada je planirano emitovanje Ligetijeve Simfonijske poeme u Holandiji 1963. otkazano zbog protivljenja kritike, Ligeti ispravno primećuje da su ga odbacili i buržuji i radikali; ove dve grupe se ne razlikuju preterano jedna od druge. “Obe ove grupe su zatucane”.[1] Skoro pola veka posle ovog događaja, Hejvord je prepun hipstera, sitne buržoazije i studenata umetnosti fasciniranih onim sto vide kao “ironično-ikonično”, radove koji podražavaju minimalizam ali sa prepoznatljivo ostrvskim stavom. Martin Krid možda koristi Fluksus u smislu verbalnog uputstva za postavljanje radova (njegova dela se fizički lako reprodukuju), ali on nije ni fluksusovac ni minimalista. Ova umetnost je hrana za bebe. Previše je reducirana, dopadljiva na način na koji su neki beblji ukusi uvek dopadljivi, zabavna onako kako je zabava uvek zabavna. Ali u čemu je fora? Šta je poenta ovakve izložbe? Ona ne uči ništa, ne razjašnjava ništa, ništa ne istražuje, provocira niti testira – ukratko, to je ilustracija početka razmišljanja o umetnosti. “Šta je svrha ovoga?” je prvo pitanje koje umetnik treba da postavi i sebi i drugima, ali bi onda bilo uputno da se izvuče iz fetalnog položaja gde mu svaki odgovor zvuči previše pokroviteljski ili preozbiljno, i da pokuša da pronađe neke odgovore. Krid, kao i cela njegova generacija, deluje kao žrtva postmoderne utopije da umetnost treba samo da postavlja pitanja a ne i da iznalazi odgovore. Naravno, znam da umetnost nije nauka, da se samo povremeno koristi empirijskim metodama, ali tada je u neku ruku i najvitalnija: tada otkriva nove metodologije, ispituje nove filozofske teme, ideje i sl. Savremena umetnost je u tolikoj meri u službi advertajzinga i borbe za pridobijanje publike, da Kridova lakoća, iako pitka i popularna, deluje kao lepršava muzika za distopične liftove.
Martin Krid je u Hejvord galeriji, Southbank centar, od 29. januara do 27. aprila 2014.
[1] Ove Nordval, György Ligeti, Eine Monographie. Mainz, Schott, 1971.
What’s the point? Martin Creed at the Hayward Gallery
What is this shape for? This colour? What will happen if we accumulate the lot, place them in orderly close proximity to one another, then stand back and look? What do we see? Things? Lines in space? Some furniture? A crumpled ball of paper?
Much has been made of that crumpled ball of A4 sheet of paper, currently at display in Hayward Gallery in London, forming a part of the largest retrospective of Martin Creed’s work to date. The said paper ball (Work 293, A sheet of paper crumpled into a ball) was once sent to the Director of Tate Gallery Nicolas Serota, only to be returned to the artist flattened in an envelope. The piece is now recreated in its sterile glory, its existence on a plinth causing each viewer to crack a smile. Ha! Here it is! The proof of artist’s daring Glaswegian cheek, or vacuity of the art world, or democracy of art, or slightly constipated half-century of minimalist history, depending on the mind of the beholder.
The mind of the beholder is an elastic thing. Anecdotal works, such as the crumpled ball of paper, or the Turner prize winning Lights that go on and off, have acquired a following of a diverse group of people who like Creed’s work (or appreciate its cheek), but can’t really tell you why. Is it because, in their exaggerated visual and technical emptiness, these works serve as a mirror to our ideas of the art world? This is probably the reason why it’s so easy to construct children’s workshops around a Creed exhibition: all you need to do is give children some A4 paper, some crayons, some basic words and colours. It is very easy to form activities that fill the blanks created by a word Mothers, for example. Everyone has a mother. Things. Everyone knows what they are. Feelings. You get the picture.
But what is the point of it?
What is the point of accumulating all these drawings, paintings, photographs, sculpture, kinetic objects and neon signs in one place? Creed suggests that this collection ‘reflects on the unease we face in making choices, the comfort we find in repetition, the desire to control, and the inevitable loss of control that shapes existence’. That reads as an anthropological sketch of the most general of human traits. It is as close as stating the obvious as it gets in the art world.
Playing balls, tables, lego, drawings, cacti, nails, broccoli prints – they are all collected, organised, numbered, ordered by gradation. They’re all ‘things’ that we can be without. Then why display them at all? Playfulness? Creed is the audience’s favourite, not just by the lowest common denominator. His ‘public architectural intervention’ is a multi-coloured brick wall. A tall wall, but only a brick wall that you can walk around and around, seeing nothing but your own tail. An unnerving squeak of the door opening and closing: a non-human automaton that makes you glance briefly, check yourself for response that is not needed. Seven thousand or so balloons in a small, enclosed space, collectively known as Half the air in a Given Space (Work 200), cause everyone to giggle and whip their iPhones out. It’s a lot like Ernesto Neto’s Ora Bolas…Alguma Coisa Acontece no Mergulho do Corpo, no Horizonte, na Gravidade (2005), only without gravity (or gravitas). The point, at this point, seems to be about having undemanding, lighthearted fun – something increasingly associated with an art gallery.
While the ‘nothing’ of Fluxus seemed to suggest a spiritual or mental discipline, the nothingness of Creed’s everything has an interactive, mindless IKEA quality to it. The gesture behind the artwork before and after its execution exists in a mediated space so jammed with calculated meaning that only by intentionally focusing on the anaemic lack of depth does the artist succeed in subverting our programmatic, over-informed minds. Not that he has set to subvert anything. Choked by the fifty years of conceptualism, in the country whose literal thinking outstrips the visual, Creed comes across as savant: an artist whose work does not require close inspection, or any visual inspection at all. It works as an anecdote that opposes passing any involved narrative, sensation or information to his audience.
Several years ago, when reading Patrick Gale’s novel Notes From an Exhibition, I discovered the orderly, silent world of Quakerism. One of the characters in the novel describes the meetings of the Society of Friends (as Quakers are also known) as non-hierarchical, meditative events that hold still the noise of the outside world. Martin Creed comes from a Quaker family. Did any of the stillness rub off? Quakers sit together in silence for an hour in an unadorned space, and only speak if someone wishes to say something. Art has no purpose in Quaker spaces because, what’s the point? Unlike the Catholics, Quakers rarely ponder the extreme gilded highs and demonic lows of existence. The light that comes on and off might just be enough.
Are his works peaceful? Can one call a giant, rotating neon sign shouting MOTHERS peaceful? I think one can. Especially if its revolutions completely ownthe top half of the gallery, while the bottom half is flooded with ticking metronomes. There is something gentle about this safe intrusion. About not, in fact, having to think about a work of art at all.
Shortly before winning the Turner prize in 2001 the critic Jonathan Jones fleetingly compared Creed to John Cale, but Creed’s ‘verbal score’ owes much more to Ligeti than to the once collaborator of La Monte Young. It was György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes, composed in 1962 during his short association with Fluxus, that features a very similar ‘event-score’ to Creed’s Thirty-Nine Metronomes Beating Time, one at Every Speed (Work 112, 1995-2004). Ligeti specifies one hundred metronomes wound to tick at varying speed, whereas Creed has thirty-nine. In both cases the instruments are set to start at the same time, but then gradually they fall out of the initial rhythm as their ticking patterns part ways, dispersing aurally from loud synchronized ticking into a pleasant mechanical noise, not unlike a cricket song. The piece ends when, one by one, all metronomes run out of their prescribed time.
This was the piece that finally got to me in Hayward, not just because I’m quite fond of Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique. What I liked was its knowing return to silence after a fanciful flight into absurdity. What I detected (possibly recalling Ligeti) was a complete lack of irony in the way the works establish connections with the audience. Creed’s works are art lite, basic and uplifting, in kindergarten colours, shiny neons and popping balloons. When Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique planned broadcast in 1963 was cancelled, he pointed out that it was rejected by the petit-bourgeois as well as the radicals: the two groups are not too different from one another. ‘They both have the blinkers of the narrow-minded’.[1]Nearly half a century later, Hayward is filled anew with hipsters, petit-bourgeois and art students fascinated by what they see as ‘ironic-iconic’ works that mimic the script of minimalism with a recognisably British curl of the lip. Martin Creed may use the Fluxus-style verbal scripts as instructions how to set his gallery pieces (his artworks are physically easy to reproduce), but he is neither Fluxus nor minimalist. This art is baby food. At times, it strips away far too much. It is likeable, yes, because some flavours always are, because fun is always meant to be fun. But what is the point of such an exhibition? It teaches nothing, elucidates nothing, explores nothing, tests out no boundaries, in short – it’s an illustration of how a beginning of thinking about art ought to look like. ‘What’s the point’ is visibly the first question one asks, but it ought to think itself out of the foetal position from which every answer appears too patronising or earnest, and to grow some answers.Creed, like his entire generation, is steeped deep in belief that art should only pose questions, not seek any concrete answers. Of course, art is not science, and only sometimes uses its empiric strategies, but it is then that it is at its most vital, discovering new methodologies, probing new philosophical ideas, and so forth. Contemporary art reflects so much of the demands of advertising and audience entertainment that Creed’s lightness, although a credible reflection, quickly and aimlessly fades away.
Martin Creed is at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, 29thof January to 27thof April 2014.
