In this paper, I shall be moving as I talk. At times what I have to say will sit within the artifice of this forum. At other times, I will be directing my voice not at you, but at the forum itself, at its fragile construction, and at its nature as a force that finds us here together momentarily. Most importantly, I will be speaking from a violently personal position that questions our relevance to one another.
Like most theatres of criticism, it is the title that catches me, locking me into its gauge. “Meaning in Contemporary Australian Art.” The title speaks of the dumbness of unseen irony that characterises so much asked the states, the irony being the title’s reverse: meaning has now only become an issue because a number of fractions within our splintered art tradition have chosen to disregard meaning as being an issue. Thus, meaning is now an issue in art forums because its prominent place in such cultural contexts is mildly threatened.
I am invited to address you presumably due to my involvement in what is seen to be a fresh dichotomy, this gorgeously sprouting debate on meaning. Frankly, I am angered by this. However, my anger, my dissatisfaction or whatever is might be, is very difficult to manipulate or channel in any concrete way. It emits from me like steam, weightless and amorphous. In fact, its force and impact is numbed somewhat by the distance I am able to hold to it. If anything, I am frustrated by my engagement in ideas on the issue of meaning now in 1983 because I probably have moved elsewhere. Not forwards as such—simply elsewhere.
It is 1978. First year in fine arts at Latrobe University. (Might I add, my only year in fine arts.) At the end of the list of essay topics is Duchamp and The Large Glass. Like the bulk of art criticism, theorising and education, the game is rigged; like a game of Fish or Snap, things match or they don’t match. Duchamp’s The Large Glass is seen as either meaningful or meaningless. The topic was divided into two along those lines –you either defend its meaning, valiantly crusading it with your flourishing pain; or you condemn it as lacking meaning, an empty hollow event propped up by its mere pretence of meaning. In my essay, I argued for the meaninglessness of The Large Glass as a means to disqualify the bloated historical worth that the very notion of meaning is densely embedded with. To this day, I am struck by the patheticness of meaning an issue: of how it hides behind an argument of whether it should be wildly cast loose or coherently put to use. Of course I argue by and large for the former (and have done so publicly for the past six years). But in terms of critically debating these issues, it is the nature of ‘sides’ that too often erodes there effectiveness. A side is unfortunately no more than the mummification of an argument, made rigid and applicable for general usage by its very solidification, its loss of fluidity.
In other words, I don’t want to talk about meaning. Perhaps what I really want to talk about is why I don’t want to talk about meaning, arguing for and against the value in such arguing and in my talking about it at all. So let’s move elsewhere.
I continually feel as though I am living in some sort of shadow, as if the present is forever tied down not only by lumpen forces like historicism and realism, but also by liberated notions of personal expression and dialectic interaction. Here we are all in this room—each here the various reasons, but communally linked by a shadowed Present. A social arena where we will engage ourselves and each other. For now, it is Meaning–in particular, modes and effects that bounce off one another in the confrontation between the likes of Popism and the Trans Avant-Garde. Lines are marked, sides are drawn, weapons are chosen, strategies are planned. This is not to say that, in reality, that art theory and criticism is like Rocky III (despite its plausibility) but that all the different elements, all the scattered fossilising bones of contention in the field of Contemporary Art are taken for granted as having an effect in this field. By parallel, if one were to closely and faithfully follow cricket or football or rugby, one would have definite viewpoint not only of every player in every team, but also every facet of the sport: grounds, umpires, tribunals, score systems, uniforms, club activities, public image, takeaway food, prices, etc.. However, Art shies away from the fan—despite art and sport sharing similar realisms—purporting to be involved in what is socially coded as a higher level of cultural engagement, i.e. you and me here today. So, the air is here thick with critical triggers that float fly at random: the painted surface, popular culture, quotation, expression, ideology, appropriation, personalism, fashion, Marxism, sexuality, etc. etc. etc.. In our chit chat we encounter them all continually, and each time we’re meant to either register a wry smirk or flash our hand to our gun-holster. It is precisely here that I echo Clark Gable’s sentiments: “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.”
Is there actually anything in the artworks themselves that pushes me one way or the other? Answer: no. The value of art is only in its application, in the spotted sporadic articulation of its fleeting configurations at any given instance. I find no pleasure in being seduced by myths of sensualism either in the history of art, the nature of art, or the criticism of art. My critical existence is only momentary. (The bulk of what I have to say it is only instigated by me being asked to talk to you today.) I have no in a voice that is affected by heart and it’s its objects and its cultural all, a voice that defines my vision. I enjoyed talking about hearts-but only while I’m talking.
The contemporary context of art is like the weather–its nature as occurrence is as inevitable as its markings. Art—like the weather—is part of the texture of the Now, in that it changes, mutates, recurs, fades, explodes, disappears. It is this sensation of movement, of eventfulness, of happening that generates the appearance of currency, its ‘Now-ness’. We thrive on the cathartic energy of the times changing, blind to exactly what it is that is or might be changing, and why. The perception of times changing is the result of perspective in stasis. The status of the issue, the controversy or the debate is too hastily digested in our quest for some action. We have to face the backlash of our liberal-minded tendencies, foregoing the simplicity of ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ for a stunting critical complexity, as we too often sell the pleasure in the dumbness of an image for state noted dialectics. And that is what I would call being short-changed.
We talk about ‘meaning’ in art and so forth, but rarely acknowledge the self-perpetuating nature of their efforts and propulsion within art. Whenever I refer to meaning I am always referring to an exchange of Language that is governed by multiplicity. Not that the spoken word kills the passionate soul, or that expression is beyond description—all that is no more than religious crap. I’m talking about how meaning is containable and transferable in every possible way. No one or no thing owns meaning—that is its primal characteristic. Meaning in art—indeed, in any selected or deliberated field defined by cultural boundaries—attempts to put meaning at its service, whether it does so oppressively or liberally. Plus, if you want me to really talk about meaning in art, point to anything and I’ll talk. And I’ll keep talking until you say stop. I’ll stop and start anywhere, any time. No start. No finish. Art—like anything—will yield pleasure when you embrace its perversity.
But perhaps I should be more pragmatic and make a few direct references for those who feel they need them. My dislocated attachment to Art is the result is not of theorization, but of engagement, practice and events. As part of → ↑ →, it has only been in the past two years that the ‘art scene’ or ‘art world’ (well used words that connote holistic fragmentation) has acknowledged our existence—an acknowledgement that does not affect or account for the fact that → ↑ → already had four years of solid work underneath its arm. It did not take long to realise that we were being appropriated into Art. One example of many is the Biennale of Sydney asking us “Haven’t you got some sort of disco show? Couldn’t you do that for us?” etc.. (I hasten to point out that this is a double-take on the Crystal ballroom asking us to do “that arty disco thing” in their pub.) I find it extremely ironic, however, that appropriation in Art should be seen at all as an issue—considering that the context of Art is engineered by its continual appropriation any mode of work at any time so long as there is some mileage to be gotten out of that appropriation. This is especially so in the area of contemporaneity, where Art (like all social and cultural activities) is invariably determined by pulses, trends, backlashes and re-discoveries.
This is not from me to whinge, but for me to tell you that → ↑ → in contemporary Australian art can be reduced to a cute curiosity, an intriguing novelty. Such a process of reduction, to me, makes Art no different from any other cultural context in terms of the mechanics of its communication and critical evaluation. It is this particular lack of difference that defines my view of popular culture as a culture that swallows everything including Art. Art continually distances itself from things like popular culture—ignorant to the fact that popular culture itself does not even acknowledge the meaning of such a name. The recent merger of popular culture and art—part of the reason why I feel that forums such as today’s are seen to be current—only further proves the distance between these two areas, whereby the artist and the critic don’t even understand how popular culture means: a misunderstanding that has snowballed into the farcical critical arena that is now in existence. As a term, ‘popular culture’ is as meaningful and all meaningless as the word ‘art’.
At this point in time in history, there is mileage to be got out of this perverse merger. Unfortunately, Art has had the power to relegate any work born of or kidnapped by this merger to the ‘popular culture’ basket: a basket that sits in tongue-tied mystification as to what the results are such a critical merger might be. Even the “Popism” show itself had very little work that fully manipulated such a merger, mutation or process of appropriation—especially when outside of the confines of its curatorial context. Remember, though, that “Popism” was a curatorial event, a point of departure, of suggestion; a perverse and openly dislocated play with the multiplicity of meaning. Thus, works from the show now only carry the staining of such usage–but then again, what else is meaning but staining?
Stains can either come out in the wash or will be embedded in the fabric. For all its spastic energy, the “Popism” exhibition inevitably got dragged down, suffering the worst fate of all: rationalisation. The stains congealed. An ‘us-and-them’ situation was nurtured, and out came the cards for us all to play Snap and Fish again. From Memory Holloway’s pathetic review of “Popism” in Art Network, to Bernice Murphy’s considerably more encompassing and less constrictive introduction to the 1983 Perspecta catalogue, there is the flattened-out dichotomy of the young versus the old; the Popists versus the traditionalists; the figurative versus the expressionist; etc.. If anything, though, the only serious implication of such a critical process is that the distribution of bulk is even and balanced. The impression is of two even signs, mirroring each other in force, power, number and popularity. This of course is absurd. The dichotomy of ‘Popistic’ work (whatever that means) is probably much more damaging to the work that isn’t ‘Popistic’—in the same way that any work ‘dealing’ with popular culture is accorded the same mass, the same consideration, the same density. Art criticism is always out of synchronisation with the art it talks about. As such, the more interesting criticism is that which denies the self-effacing realistic method of talking about art in favour of a more openly self-contained mode of writing, as artificial as art itself. What makes this all the more tedious is the way that this whole debate in many aspects is a replay of the collision between Punk/New Wave music and the Rock’n’Roll tradition, and the importation of linguistic philosophy into film theory and criticism–both of which happened (in Australia) around 1977. From memory, people in art circles then were arguing about conceptual art, minimal art, performance art, and video art. Perhaps you even attended those forums?
I finish this paper was a quote by Alison Fraser, who curated the “Film as Art” program now touring Australia. In this program, → ↑ → have the film Some Lost Advertisements. In her profile on → ↑ → Alison Fraser has by accident or design written a sublime piece of ambiguity; a beautifully indivisible insult-cum-kudo, that by its nature as a critical perspective reflects what I stated at the outset of this paper as the questioning of relevance to one another:
Hopefully, we have ended up where we started: gone with the wind.