The modern art world is filled with pranks and pranksters, the clowns who have decided that play counts for art. Brattish artists foist a range of projects and conceptual themes upon art galleries who, foolishly, see emperors decked in the finest wear. They refuse to consider that the wear is absent, an expensive mirage that tells to an old tale of the imperial ruler without clothes.
This is a world, of transaction, appearance and display, based on conceit and seduction, the toying by the super star artist of the necessarily gullible, and the acceptance on their part they are bearing witness to the exceptional. When Banksy’s Girl with Balloon
was shredded at Sotheby’s (a sort of art styled seppuku), it was subsequently, and all too quickly, transformed into Love is in the Bin. Technicians in the room did not seem too fussed by the occurrence, and diligently went about their business of retouching the new piece for the market amidst nervous laughter and much tittering. Banksy’s own company Pest Control granted the work a new certificate. Another prank had been played.
The anonymous woman
who had initially bid for the previous painting at the point of
shredding found herself in raptures, but had to play along as initially
shocked. (She may well have been, but this posture seemed distinctly
contrived.) The £1,042,000 was well spent, thank you very much.
“When the hammer
came down last week and the work was shredded, I was at first shocked,
but gradually I began to realise that I would end up with my own piece
of art history,” came the observation from the buyer.
Marketing executive Stephanie Fielding feels that Sotheby’s would have been in on it.
“One would hope in an age of security consciousness they would have known that such a contraption was inside the artwork.”
Sotheby’s did
little to dispel this notion, boasting that the new work had been
“created in our salesroom”, and was “the first work in history ever
created during a live auction.” Its employees also added to the tattle,
a layering of playfulness.
“I don’t think we knew,” came the guarded receptionist, “but we’re not allowed to say anymore.”
Put another way, in
an age constipated by its preoccupation with health and safety mania,
Banky would never have been able to pull this off without collaborating
insiders and complicit agents. Not that it convinces the likes of
photographer Matteo Perazzo, who clings, charmingly, to the belief
that Banksy remains “opposed to the art establishment, so it would be
weird if he had colluded with them.” With such opponents, who needs a
true resistance?
Then comes the
element of complicity with and in the establishment itself. Banksy
realised, long ago, that his resistance to the system was its own
acceptance. His entire approach was premised on mocking something that
would, in time, be seen as something to assimilate. To that end, it is
unsurprising that questions should be asked of Sotheby’s itself.
The same point can
be made of the entire art market and the notion of “street” stencilling
that used to be frowned upon as inventions of graffiti. It did not take
long for such street dabbling to become the stuff of auctions, to make
its way into the richest galleries and homes of private collectors.
It is fitting that
nothing of this is aesthetic or remarkable. The key is the subversion
of convention that, in times, becomes conventional: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain
signed by a “R. Mutt 1917” subverts conventional form to become art,
turning a porcelain urinal into marketable commodity; a painting at
auction is shredded, thereby creating a surge of shredding in other
quarters in a blitz of increasing art value. (This can severely backfire
– an owner of a Banksy print decided to vandalise his own possession,
dramatically reducing its value.)
Even critics of the sober disposition of Will Gompertz claimed
to be wrong in suggesting that artists for the past century had “failed
to outwit and outdo Marcel Duchamp”. There had been efforts to destroy
and obliterate works – Robert Rauschenberg’s rubbing out of a drawing by
Dutch artist Willem de Kooning in 1953 stands out as a tendentious
example that fell short. It took Banksy, claimed the gushing Gompertz,
to make him realise “that there was an artwork hanging on the walls of a
London auction house which was about to do just that”, another
Duchamp-like experiment that could be carried off. In what smacks of
unnecessary prostration before the gimmick, he suggests that Love is in the Bin “will come to be seen as one of the most significant artworks of the early 21st century.”
The late Australian
art critic Robert Hughes, constantly sharp on the effects of
speculation in art, reflected upon the phenomenon in 2004. His speech
at Burlington House was a defence of the Royal Academy, a body he hoped
could be rebooted to face the degradation brought on by wealthy
collectors. He had “always been suspicious of the effects of
speculation in art”; after 30 years in New York he had “seen a lot of
the damage it can do: the sudden puffing of reputations, the throwing of
eggs in the air to admire their short grace of flight, the tyranny of
fashion.”
Banksy is less
talent than a search, a hunt for the next saleable stunt which might be
authentic or otherwise (fake smatterings of graffiti purportedly by the
artist, by way of example, were reported
in Kyiv this July); less an issue of durable statement than publicity
on heat. So much so that a theory doing the rounds is that the entire
shredding show was an act of inauthenticity, fakery again doing its
heralded rounds in the art world. Josh Gilbert, a Chicago blacksmith and artist, is one suggesting
that there was “no way these blades would cut canvas or even thick
paper mounted that way.” This all reeked “of misdirection”.
Banksy is the
modern statement of PR, not enduring but fleeting, an attempt to be
permanently newsworthy. At a time where an orange haired monster
remains all powerful in garnering headlines and proffering conspiracies
in Washington, tweeting with the abandon of a wannabe felon, the likes
of Banksy struggle. Times must be tough, hence the shredder. What next
in that tyranny of prank peppered fashion?
*
Dr. Binoy Kampmark
was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures
at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Global Research, October 16, 2018
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