Shortly after posting yesterday’s observations about the lack of interest in the arts during the course of the current British general election, I encountered a story that made me think afresh about the situation.
I was reading the Easy Italian News broadcast regularly (in Italian) as a way of supporting my current Italian language class, when I read an account of the destruction earlier in the week of a piece by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It appears that he had exhibited as a “work of art” a banana fixed to the wall of the gallery with duct tape. There were two sensational elements to the story. The first was the sale price of 120,000 euros, and the second was the fact that the banana had been eaten by the American artist David Datuna. Undeterred, Catalan replaced the banana.
There is, of course, nothing remotely original about Cattelan’s exhibit, thanks to Marcel Duchamp. I suppose that Datuna’s action can be acknowledged as “original”, although debatably having any relevance to art. The most remarkable feature of the episode, in my opinion, is the fact that a piece presumably priced in the light of its uniqueness could be replaced for less than the price of a cup of tea. Of the two participants in the episode I suppose that I have more respect for Datuna, who if anything demonstrated by his actions the sheer silliness of Cattelan’s piece, and questioned implicitly whether it belonged at all in an art gallery.
Whether or not these remarks are indicative of a conservatism on my part that is “out of touch” with contemporary conceptual art, is beside the point. It is important to ask, however, whether incidents like this not only serve to explain why politicians have so little regard for art, and perhaps suggests why they might be right in taking that position. How, in the light of the Cattelan incident, can any political figure, responsible for arguing the case for taxation, stand in front of the public and advocate the expansion of public support for the arts? This is particularly the case in relation to an election in which significant issues for debate have been the lack of adequate state support for essential services such as health and education. The most keenly-fought battle-grounds of the current campaign are the declining formerly industrial areas (in the USA they would be called the “rust belt”) that today suffer real poverty and are moved by a sense of neglect by our political elite.
Unless and until artists are able to engage more directly and meaningfully with the central problems of society they will be ignored quite rightly by those holding the public purse strings. Meanwhile, Maurizio Cattelan remains an irrelevance to both art and to society.