Sometimes these days, when I’m going around art exhibitions, I find myself feeling grumpy, miserable and hopeless. This is bit like the feeling you get when you realise it’s just not working in a relationship, and that the person you love has let you down. You may also blame yourself, wondering whether the failure is yours. That sense came down particularly strongly at the Frieze Art Fair in London this year. I wandered through the booths set up by the world’s largest, and leading galleries, and I thought: is this what I used to love?
There were the spaces of mega-galleries, such as Gagosian, full of enormous shiny objects, bland paintings and photographs, priced – if you were brave enough to enquire and well-dressed enough to get a response – in their hundreds of thousands, even in their millions. This is the art that Grayson Perry, a former Turner Prize winner, described in his recent, and brilliant, Reith Lecture series as "an asset class". Elsewhere the look and feel of the art was patchy, difficult, ugly, obscure, trying too hard, or not trying at all. If this is art now, I thought, no wonder I'm falling out of love.
But that can’t be it. Contemporary art can’t either be ridiculously expensive shiny things that won’t offend when gracing the penthouses of the insanely wealthy; or deliberately obscure grit, sometimes a puddle of oil or just twigs on a table will do, though backed up by a thesis of curatorial text telling us what to think about it. So the question is: what’s next for art?
One reason we are in such a quandary is that during the fat years, the success of an artist was too often defined by sales. Having an exhibition that sold "meant" that the work was good. You'll still find some people who claim to believe that the market is never wrong, but most, fortunately, see through such nonsense now. The problem is, for an artist, if you're not selling any more, does that make your work suddenly "no good"? This has led to a crisis of faith and confidence, and also to a vein of art that deliberately seems to refuse the market, to be anti- the empty hype of, for example, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
As the Turner Prize exhibition, on show in Derry until January 5th, demonstrates, art today isn't any one thing, and neither am I arguing that it ought to be. The previous and current exhibitions at Dublin's Kerlin gallery show this very well: Sam Keogh's Mop featured a brightly coloured lino floor, covered with made and found objects. These included a milk carton, a snow globe, a picture of a Smurf, and sculptures designed to look like the kind of accretions you might find on a rubbish dump. Currently, Paul Winstanley's Art School (until January 7th) shows hauntingly beautiful paintings of empty art school studios. It half seems as if these are the sites of crime scenes. It is clear from the paintings that something happened here – but what?
The problem is that to profess a love of painting, and a “so what” response to what looks like rubbish, is to cast yourself in the reactionary camp, and it’s not that Keogh is making bad art. There’s definitely something in there; in fact, his work is utterly honest, in that it is honestly looking, among all the messy and chaotic detritus of life, for something to say, and for a way to say it.
In his recent book, 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, Kelly Grovier asks whether art can go too far and, in response, quotes Orson Welles saying that "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations". This is a view that, even though seldom expressed, is also troubling many art world insiders. At Frieze, everyone was, once again, looking for the next big thing, and failing to find it. A new fair, led by Stephanie Dieckvoss, Art13, held in London earlier in the year, had a fresher energy, and the sense that perhaps we were on the cusp of something. This was possibly because the selected galleries weren't the usual suspects who have been selecting taste and defining success for so long.
Still, something is definitely up. It feels as if we're in a hiatus phase. In the current New Yorker, dealer David Zwirner is quoted as saying that Minimalism "was the last really great newness". What happened more recently is that "newness" itself became the thing to chase, a race that obviously has to eventually run itself into a wall, or off the rails. The art world is adept at training people to want what it's selling, but in order for the relationship to get back on track, perhaps it's time to consider instead what we want from art – beyond, that is, investment, and the cachet of agreeing with a relatively small coterie of curators.
In his new book, Art as Therapy, Alain de Botton suggests we go back to the past to ask for something more from art. As the philosopher himself notes, it would be easy to ridicule the suggestion that art can and should lead us to a better place, but as the viewpoints of art world insiders, influencers and thinkers (see panel) demonstrate, perhaps it's time to challenge the current taste-making systems, and start to think again.
Crystal ball time: What the experts predict
ALAIN DE BOTTON
"What would you do to help someone who felt deeply anxious about the future? Or who was dragged down by a sense of sadness and loneliness? […]My chosen left-field answer in all these cases is to recommend that you look closely and repeatedly at certain works of art. Such an approach can be predicted to set off an uproar among sophisticated people. The idea that one might use art for a purpose, for 'instrumental' reasons, tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite."
Alain de Botton's new book, Art as Therapy, written with John Armstrong, is published by Phaidon
DECLAN LONG
"If I have a personal preference for where art would go next, it's a pretty straightforward one: that it will go somewhere entirely unexpected. I'm hopeful that art will remain capable of misbehaving – and that it can continue to confound us […]But maybe for the next waves of new art to bother and bewilder us in really profound and challenging ways, young artists also need to be cautious of following any obvious trends. A young art student asked the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka what advice he would give to graduating artists. 'Do nothing,' was the curt answer. To prepare for the future as an artist, Balka insisted, the one essential requirement is patience."
Declan Long, who teaches at the National College of Art and Design, was one of this year's Turner Prize judges
JEROME O DRISCEOIL
"There is a new 'corporatism' in the art industry, with big galleries getting bigger, opening in several cities, and dominating the market with prices getting correspondingly higher; reaching inaccessible levels for most modest collectors. Gone is the thrill, I expect, of discovering an artist's work that you like and are fired by, and that you want to follow for the vision and integrity and beauty you personally see in the work. The bubble could burst for the art that is the subject of corporate control […]and the pendulum swing away from st-artists to equally compelling art that has been marginalised or missed out in the rush for the bigger names. But it may be some time."
Jerome O Drisceoil is director of Green on Red Gallery, in Dublin
STEPHANIE DIECKVOSS
"There are few examples of fully-fledged movements being dominant. I'm particularly interested in the relationship of local art scenes from around the world to a globalised art world. The rise of contemporary art from Africa is a really good example, with artists speaking both to their cultural background and simultaneously to an international audience."
Stephanie Dieckvoss is director of Art14, at Olympia, London, from February 28th to March 2nd next year
KELLY GROVIER
"There's no predicting the 'next big thing'. We're as likely to guess correctly what future shapes art will take as we are the first word of the next child born. All we can know for certain is that the next great artist will be as under-confident about his or her visual voice as a team of microbiologists is its discoveries will be used for good."
Kelly Grovier is author of 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, published by Thames & Hudson
MIKE FITZPATRICK
"Watching the collective: artists will continue to create energy. Living in Limerick I am surrounded by young (in years and spirit) artists who, on a daily basis, make the impossible, the insurmountable and the improbable totally possible. If someone had told me four years ago that the massive recession would create a burst of creative activity in vacant spaces in the city centre I would have doubted it. It's very precious, and it's of value to you, so engage, socially engage."
Mike Fitzpatrick is head of school at Limerick School of Art and Design
