The blurb for Picasso and Modern British Art at Tate Britain states that Picasso remains the twentieth century’s single most important artistic figure, a towering genius who changed the face of modern art. This, in a sense, is stating the blindingly obvious and that the exhibition demonstrates this through the variety and vitality of the art which Picasso created.
The particular focus of this exhibition is on the reception which Picasso's work received in this country and some of the key artists influenced by that work. This is where the current status of Picasso's influence becomes less clear. All of the modern British artists in the exhibition, with the exception of David Hockney, are dead. Generally, the reputation and influence of these artists is (often undeservedly) not what it once was (particularly during their lifetimes). Again, Hockney with his recent and popular exhibition at the Royal Academy is to some extent an exception. But where this is leading is to question the extent to which the artists featured in this exhibition, including Picasso, are actually influencing contemporary art.
While Picasso and Matisse were the towering figures in twentieth century art and the principal influences on much modern art, in terms of influence on contemporary art they would appear to have been superceded by Marcel Duchamp who, by challenging the very notion of what art is with his readymades and by his insistence that art should be driven by ideas, became the father of Conceptual art.
In 2004 Duchamp's Fountain came top of a poll of 500 art experts to be named as the most influential modern art work of all time. Simon Wilson commented: "The choice of Duchamp's Fountain as the most influential work of modern art ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse comes as a bit of a shock. But it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing - the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form."
Michael Craig-Martin is one of those who have followed the logic of Duchamp’s concept of the ready-made by seeing everyday objects as models for works of art. Interestingly, and through a work (An Oak Tree) which can also be seen currently at Tate Britain, Craig-Martin asserts that this form of artistic creation equates to religious faith:
"An Oak Tree is based on the concept of transubstantiation, the notion central to the Catholic faith in which it is believed that bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ while retaining their appearances of bread and wine. The ability to believe that an object is something other than its physical appearance indicates requires a transformative vision. This type of seeing (and knowing) is at the heart of conceptual thinking processes, by which intellectual and emotional values are conferred on images and objects. An Oak Tree uses religious faith as a metaphor for this belief system which, for Craig-Martin, is central to art. He has explained:
I considered that in An Oak Tree I had deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element, belief that is the confident faith of the artist in his capacity to speak and the willing faith of the viewer in accepting what he has to say. In other words belief underlies our whole experience of art: it accounts for why some people are artists and others are not, why some people dismiss works of art others highly praise, and why something we know to be great does not always move us.
(Quoted in Michael Craig-Martin: Landscapes, [p.20].)"
It is interesting to note that, while the stylistic innovations of Picasso could be utilised to depict the central image of Christianity (i.e. the crucifixion, as in the work which Graham Sutherland painted for St Matthew's Northampton), it was through the innovations of Duchamp that the religious nature of artistic creation itself was deconstructed and demonstrated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M. Ward - Clean Slate (For Alex & El Goodo).
No comments:
Post a Comment