I guess that most of us rely fairly selectively on different communications media to gain our information and opinions. One of my favourites is the London Review of Books. It is a great deal less parochial than its title suggests, in that it certainly doesn’t only feed the interests of people living in London, and the range of material covered in its articles extends well beyond books. Given my involvement in art it isn’t surprising that one of the columns to which I turn regularly with the greatest interest is their review of exhibitions. Each edition usually carries a considered review of a major show–and not necessarily in Britain. The last one included a piece about the retrospective of the work of the American artist Bruce Nauman, currently open in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of course I have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to catch the next jet to Kennedy airport, but it is the way in which people write about art that holds my intention as often as not.
The piece in the LRB revolved around yet another discussion of that old question of “What is art?” Of course, this can be one of those topics of discussion for which there is no natural point of conclusion, and it can be dreadfully banal. I’ve recently finished preparations for my talk next week-end on the experience of art under fascism in Italy, and I was amused to encounter a statement by a leading associate of Mussolini that “fascist art is that which is made, and will be made, during the fascist era.” It reminded me of another definition I came across, that “art is what the artist does in the studio.” In other words, the definition adds absolutely nothing to our knowledge. There is, as they say, a lot of it about.
According to the author of the LRB column, “For Nauman ‘art became more of an activity and less of a product’.” At first I was inclined to dismiss this as yet another of these inconsequential phrases, but on reflection I began to think that there might be something interesting in it. There is as dreadful danger these days in the tendency to define “art” in relation to what the art market can sell–as a product, like any other. If you fall into that frame of mind then what we are doing as artists is no more than working in order to serve demand in the market. Our relationship to the work is diminished. In the last analysis the acceptability or otherwise of what we do is shaped either by a relatively small number of wealthy and influential collectors, or by volume sales in a mass market. I do believe, on the other hand, that it is precisely what we do and the way we do it (our activity) that provides the defining characteristic of “art”.
This is not to accept the view that art can be reduced to, and should be appreciated primarily in terms of process. It does point, however, to the fact that if I ask myself the question, “Why do I paint?” my answer would have to be framed at least in part in relation to the satisfactory experience of actually painting.
I have little familiarity with the work of Bruce Nauman, and what I have learned about him suggests that I probably would not appreciate it, let alone like it, anyway. For the time being, however, I think I’m prepared to count him as on the side of the angels.