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Please, no more As usual we’ve been sold a pack of lies by State Art ninnies, those whose thinking and arguments, as far as they go, are locked in tramlines from which they never escape. Sadly, art is no different from any other realm of life in its susceptibility to the exaggerations and slippy casuistry which seem to breed unchecked in the engine room of modern affairs. The present whopper to which I refer concerns the stone-carved mantra of the cutting edge that in order to be effective art must be "challenging". Ninnies, it would seem, consider art to be the visual equivalent of that stupid prat who recently doggy-paddled through freezing slush to the North Pole. This crazy notion is taken seriously only because it is part of a ubiquitous "challenge" industry in which nothing established is allowed to remain unchallenged, however effectively it already functions. Any status quo is vulnerable to the first commandment of official arts policy: ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods but novelty and the eyecatching initiative’. Even the cutting edge of five minutes ago must be challenged because, in art, instant obsolescence applies. We gallery-goers must be taught the lesson that our preconceptions about art, and everything else, are misconceived. We are retarded. We need help. If those who believe this tripe are so obsessed with challenges they should resign their positions, re-train as economists and confront the truly serious challenges of the day, chief among which must be to find a replacement for corporate capitalism, a system which continues to fail daily, and in some cases mortally, four-fifths of the world’s population. Now that, that’s what I’d call a challenge, against which all the soi-disant "challenges" invented by dull-witted artists, braindead curators and parti-pris critics look what they are, sick and impertinent. In the last few days I’ve read two reviews of the Royal Academy Summer Show which, inevitably, criticise it for not being "challenging" enough. In one notice it is suggested that to be "challenging" is to be "contemporary" and, as we all know, to be contemporary is to sit at God’s right hand. Another scribbler of the worst kind of bollocksy reviews referred to five of the six nominees for this year’s Jerwood Prize, each stylistically distinct from the others, as not "challenging" enough. Really? All five? Try opening your eyes. In two papers, furthermore, this year’s Turner Prize shortlist is praised because, unlike the Jerwood Prize nominees, the artists are "challenging" – as in "This is a challenging list". A stand of lopped oak trunks and some treacle toffee "challenging"? Dirty drawings on vases "challenging"? Even the ancient Greeks didn’t think that was extraordinary: they made an industry of it. No, I don’t believe any of this. Challenging who exactly, and what? How? I don’t know about you but I’m up to here with all this establishment bluster about ‘challenges’. Every statement, exhibition leaflet and catalogue must wear the validating badge that this – whatever it is – is "a challenge", a challenge to everything from the "space" being exhibited in to any number of those convenience ishoos beloved of the liberal thought police. The trouble with art bureaucrats is that they have to justify conspicuously their professional status. They spend so much time discussing strategies and cooking up daft explanations, parallels, antecedents and other strained justifications for nonsense that they’ve forgotten how to look for enjoyment. They’ve fallen head first into the trap awaiting those who turn pleasures into professions, the trap into which nearly all critics eventually stagger too. Art becomes a job of work, a routine, a joyless production line, an elaborate and expensive process of self-justification. Most of these art professionals have forgotten the reason art thrilled them in the first place, if ever it did. They’ve forgotten the many reasons why people take the trouble to look at art, reasons which never, in my experience, have anything to do with challenges. Like virtually everyone else in the entertainment and leisure industries, State Art functionaries assume that art has to shout, whereas art’s silence is among its most appealing assets. Any art professional, bureaucrat or critic, who confuses art with entertainment and sport in this way should be sacked. Life without a challenge, the ninnies seem to be exhorting, must be so very grim. Well no actually it’s not. As a total stranger to challenges I’ve found it satisfying enough spending fifty years enjoying my plodding amateurism a propos of art. The only thing I continue to challenge is the seemingly limitless panorama of my own ignorance, which is where museums and galleries have always come in. The simple fact is that challenges are nothing to do with the corners of one’s sensibility or curiosity kindled by art. Behind State Art’s constant need to trump up "challenges" lives a fear. Chief among the fears is the chimera of convention: anything at all familiar is accursed. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with the conventional, or the unconventional, because potentially there are kernels of insight in each. As usual Modernism is to blame. Modernism institutionalised the "challenges" which are a religious credo for State Art. Modernism forced art to become something more than looking and enjoying. It kidded itself it was ahead of the game and worshipped outrageous reaction to the past whilst, at its most idealistic, claiming to be showing us the future. It didn’t matter what sort of a mess was being served up providing it was anchored theoretically by the challenge issued to what had gone before. And so as the visual was emptied out the alleged elixir of novelty was poured in. Unless Surrealism challenged Purism, which challenged Tubism and Orphism, which challenged Synretism, Synthetism, Suprematism and Synchromism, all of which challenged Expressionism, Fauvism and Cubism, the last being that fons et origo of the new order ... it wasn’t worth doing. It was no longer sufficient to enjoy a passage of form, a singing colour, a brilliant line simultaneously suggesting width, depth and curvature ... unless it came underpinned by "the challenge". A painting, or anything else, was no longer allowed to be what it was and enjoyed for its own sake. That’s not my experience of art, and I suspect it’s not the experience of many. Am I alone in wandering through modern art museums past walls full of what I’m expected to believe are key "challenges" which are visually impoverished? Why do so many of Modernism’s nominal "challenges" fail so abjectly to justify their top billing. By its adherence to "challenges" State Art blindly repeats these past mistakes. So, at last, here are a few special things I’ve not been challenged by but which have surprised and moved me during the past few weeks: All these things fed me a little satisfaction, lit my imagination and helped induce escape from quotidian filth. Some aroused my curiosity to keep discovering more. They "challenged" me not in the least, and certainly solved nothing, but all reminded me that the finest designs of both antiquity and today, and even the best pictures by the greatest photographer of the 20th century, touch the same tender spots and inspire the same fascinated and uncomprehending responses. Each made me thank God for the life of the astonishing individual who made it. That’s all. David Lee |  | ||||||
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