JULY\/AUGUST, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest press release arrives from the Serpentine, a place, we are told, with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153robust programme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which sounds slightly threatening. It begins: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153From 1 June to 10 September 2023, Serpentine will present Web(s) of Life, the first major exhibition in the UK of artist Tom\u00c3\u00a1s Saraceno and collaborators, including spider\/webs; the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, Argentina; spider diviners in Somi\u00c3\u00a9, Cameroon; the ongoing research-driven community projects Aerocene and Arachnophilia initiated by the artist; as well as the life forms of the Royal Parks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
You may notice they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve taken a leaf out of the Tate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book and dropped both the definite article and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGallery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 from their name. Very cool. Delving deeper, what \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSerpentine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 hopes to achieve is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153building connections between art and society\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. We are not informed which particular \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsociety\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 this might be, but it probably enjoys the seaweed soda bread they sell in their ugly caf\u00c3\u00a9 of which they are so proud it gains honourable mention in the current annual report \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 which goes on: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We aim to diversify our audiences and increase audience retention, through an emphasis on different visitor experiences informed by data. We will do this by strengthening our brand, vision and mission, implementing a three-year audience framework and diversifying media reach and creative partnerships.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Brands, missions, visions, media reach \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d think you were dealing with Burger King or John Lewis, but this corporate claptrap comes from an art gallery!
And so \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and so we must return wistfully to the umpteenth singing of a favourite old hymn of ours. Why is the Serpentine so obsessed with showing anything from abroad and scarcely anything originating at home. What, for example, does the above flea circus inspired by the eight-legged say to native British artists with nowhere prominent to exhibit their paintings or in which to expect a retrospective?
In the Serpentine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last published accounts the gallery received \u00c2\u00a33.142 millions in public subsidy via the Arts Council. This amount included their annual \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcon the nod\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 subsidy of a million-plus, nearly two millions from the Cultural Recovery Fund (recovery from what exactly?), plus a wedge from the last of the Covid furloughing of its 75 employees. And what the blazes do 75 full-time staff do in a converted tearoom with an annexe? As usual with their annual reports, in order to find out anything one must wade through more than 200 pages of cringe-inducing self-congratulation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmodesty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is not a word Hans O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Bisto, the Swiss director (\u00c2\u00a3130,000 a year), has come across in any of the languages in which he claims fluency, albeit mostly in artbollocks. State Art is a career ladder well worth shoving others off in order to scramble upwards. Last year, for example, the Serpentine had only one person (O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Bisto naturally) earning more than a hundred grand, now they have four. One wonders how British artists, whose average earnings is around \u00c2\u00a312,000 pa (below the poverty line note), must feel about a Treasury-supported gallery which hardly ever shows British work, and where curators can earn ten times more than the average artist. Personally, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never come across a curator, or indeed a critic or gallery director, who is worth more than an artist. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recall any \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcContemporary Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 curator ever telling me anything I considered worth knowing. Contemporary Art curating is, in any case, not a real \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcprofession\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 precisely because it is a charlatan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s charter. No scholarship is involved, you just make it up so that anything at all becomes relevant. In any worthwhile art industry the artist would stand at the pinnacle. After all, it is their work that will last. Alas, the State Art pyramid balances on its point, with the fattest penpushers on the plateau crushing the breath out of the rest. Where is a satirist like Gillray when you need him?
And what of the trustees, those supposed guardians of the public interest, up to? Nothing. Placing genuine artists and art historians on these boards is avoided. They might muddy the water with common sense while encouraging more traditional forms of excellence. No, trustees are chosen mainly because they are rich and, we discover, may provide loan guarantees when wolves comes howling. Between them the Serpentine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trustees contributed to the gallery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coffers \u00c2\u00a32.5 million in cash in the last reported year, much of it from one trustee alone. So don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be under any illusions that the State Art club is not self-contained and self-perpetuating. It is. What no one asks about the Serpentine, and others aboard the Arts Council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bisto Express, is why it should receive a ha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122penny of public subsidy at all, given that it does almost nothing for the majority of British artists while expecting the public to cough up in support of its prejudices. It is obvious why State Art protects this corrupt system so avidly while defending itself with lies about how popular and successful it is. Why should any of us support a gallery which \u00e2\u20ac\u0153has long stood at the forefront of global convenings across cultures and disciplines\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Who are the jobsworths who scribble this tripe \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and why are they paid so much?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JULY\/AUGUST, 2023 The latest press release arrives from the Serpentine, a place, we are told, with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153robust programme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which sounds slightly threatening. It begins: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153From 1 June to 10 September 2023, Serpentine will present Web(s) of Life, the first major exhibition in the UK of artist Tom\u00c3\u00a1s Saraceno and collaborators, including spider\/webs; the communities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2762,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions\/2762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}