I’ve just finished reading the section in Lanny May Freedman’s book What Happened to Art? in which she discusses the work of Antony Gormley. It certainly gave me pause for thought, for several reasons. The primary focus of her critique is the language in which Gormley describes his own work, finding his style overblown and, when examined with care, virtually meaningless. Throughout a good part of her exposition I found myself cheering her on, as a good deal of what she says echoes my own former derogatory remarks about “art bollocks”.* Indeed, Gormley does seem to have fallen into the common trap lying in wait for artists of feeling obliged to say too much about their work. One often gains the impression that artists are terrified that if they do not explain exhaustively what they are doing it will evoke no response from the public. What is more, unless this explanation is lengthy, complex and esoteric they run the risk of not being taken seriously.
Freedman’s critique is all sound stuff: and whereas it is certainly appropriate that we should provide the public with signposts they might use in their journey of exploration of what we do, far too many of us seem to be terrified of being considered light-weight unless we can befuddle the viewer with an essay on semiotics. Even so: I wonder whether Freedman hasn’t gone rather over the top in her demolition of Antony Gormley. She makes the mistake, in my opinion, of assuming that because Gormley’s attempts to explain his work in print are preposterous, and ultimately devoid of meaning, the work itself must not be worthy of consideration. This certainly is not the case with Gormley. His work may well be over-valued, but it its not by that token valueless.
I have spent some time with his Another Place, on Crosby beach, and I am happy to say that I did find it quite a moving experience, although at the time I had not read anything the artist had said about it. It conveyed to me a profound sense of the mutual isolation of human beings, facing their inevitable common fate of being overwhelmed by the sea. Meanwhile, we gaze seaward in the vain hope that something will appear to rescue us. Gormley himself caught my sense of this in his TV interview in 2014. “I want to make a true testimony of what it feels like to be alive now, at the beginning of the 21st. century.” It may be grim, but I can both understand and respect that. Similarly, the Angel of the North conveys (at least to me) a feeling of the possibly hopeless defiance of the region, in its industrial decline. There is no possibility that its cumbersome wings (with their echoes of the steel-making past of the area) will ever provide the means of its escape, as it gazes obdurately southwards from whence, presumably, the threat comes.
Now, of course, these remarks are my own responses to Gormley’s work. This is, however, what you would expect from any work of art. The viewer is expected to engage with it and to develop his or her own response to it. The lesson from this, however, is that “less is often more” when it comes to what artists say about their own work. Let it speak, as far as is possible, for itself.
I have to admit that, having read Freedman’s attempted demolition of Gormley, I did have a nasty moment, and was sent scurrying off to the file in which I have been collecting material in preparation for my exhibition in the Ilkley Manor House Museum, next Easter. Had I “done a Gormley”? overdoing the verbiage to an embarrassing degree in the attempt to present my work? I don’t think so …. but I will certainly be on my guard in the future.
*See, or example, my post of 23 Jan. 2015.