Issue No.587
Culture
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23 -29 May 2002 Issue No.587 Culture |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Not quite picture perfect
By Nigel Ryan
Postcards of works of art -- they have, for almost as long as I can remember, been an essential accessory of the supposedly enlightened. Students everywhere stick them on their walls, a Picasso here, a Matisse there, usually something simple, graphic. The more angst ridden might go for a Schiele, limbs attenuated in psychic distress, the more decoratively inclined a Klimt, a gilded secessionist kiss. You can be an enlightened young fogey with a Bellini portrait, a bright, Mediterranean soul with a Dufy.
If the size of the shops attached to major galleries are anything to go by, the postcard buying habit is growing. The retail operations of the world's major museums get bigger and bigger: indeed, they sometimes exhibit every desire to turn themselves into mini- department stores. What used to be little more than a counter, offering a handful of cards in some corner of the foyer has expanded into a gallery offering a full array of artistic bits and pieces, posters, framed or rolled, Brancusi paperweights, enameled Hilliard miniatures. Objects from the most iconic paintings are carefully reproduced and sold as knick-knacks, and all with the kind of gallery- branding that targets those poor souls who wish, in their household furnishings, to declare, as loudly and clearly as possible that yes, it's true, I am a lover of art, and one who exhibits an exemplary taste.
Not only do these retail operations now occupy prominent gallery space that less than two decades ago would have been devoted to the display of the art itself rather than the spin-offs it has generated, but they are generally positioned so as to make it impossible for the visitor not to pass through on the way to the exit. They are the equivalent of those selections of chocolates that are prominently displayed next to the till in small grocers' shops, large supermarkets and whatever lies in between: you have no choice but to confront them, perusing the selection as the assistant fumbles with your change, the hope being that having perused you will buy. It makes perfect retail sense, though quite whether retailing should be such a foregrounded activity in public galleries is not at all clear. Still, there is obviously a demand, and it is being filled, as well as created, by such emporiums.
Why, I was once asked by a colleague who, having recently moved into a new apartment, had found herself with a lot of empty wall space, should I spend money on third rate art when I can have a Picasso or a Chagall. The question came in response to my answering her request for advice on what she might hang on those empty walls: I had not suggested bad art, had, indeed, suggested the work of artists I liked and would be more than willing to buy myself. Nor would the amounts in question have been inordinately large: good art, in Cairo, is far cheaper than bad. Interesting artists may be at a premium but because they are interesting, and usually young, their work is sold at bargain basement prices in a market that prefers the established, for which it is all too often possible to read mediocre, the predictable, the uninteresting. Nor did I point out that what she was talking about was not a Chagall, but a reproduced poster of a painting, and that the two are in no way interchangeable.
Click to view captionIt is a very crude rule of thumb, but one that should not be discounted out of hand: the kind of paintings that make nice postcards are generally not the best paintings. Indeed, it is possible to extrapolate further: paintings that make for good reproductions are not, necessarily, the most interesting paintings. Whatever the advances in printing, and the technology of reproduction, it remains impossible to replicate even the most essential of surface textures. The metaphysically loaded gesture of brush, of palette-knife, of splatter, the scratches and striations, the over-painting and areas of translucency are all reduced to the same muddied sameness. A reproduction negates surface and surface is one of things, one of the more important things, that painting is. The plasticity of the medium, the actual substance of paint, is another necessary component, and one impossible to reproduce.
Posters remain just that, posters. In and of themselves they are perfectly interesting: there are any number of graphic items you might wish to stick on your walls. But you have to choose them, which means being comfortable with your own taste, for they are going to lack the imprimateur of the brand name unless, of course, you have the wherewithal to purchase items from the major auction houses. A vintage film-poster will come in at many times the price of a roomful of excellent work by gifted, but not established, artists, and is unlikely to hold your attention for anything but the shortest term.
One artist I know is utterly determined that his next exhibition will take place not in a gallery, but will be disseminated over the Internet: it is a convenient enough medium, given that what he is planning is essentially a series of photographic collages. They can then be downloaded, and printed to the necessary specifications, by anyone who has access to the requisite hardware. But this, I fear, is not going to convince my colleague: it, too, lacks the necessary imprint, the designer label that is the guarantee of good taste.
The seemingly enlightened, those whose visual sensibilities have been nursed on the postcard and the poster, are, I realise, not likely to be impressed by the absence of plasticity: if you don't know it's there in the first place you won't miss it. Which merely confirms the suspicion that it is not the art that interests in the first place, but the kudos it is supposed to endow.
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