Controversy, Shock Tactics and.... Nothing to Say
It’s hard to get any kind of attention with all this noise: everyone’s shouting and no-one’s listening. I mean this both literally and metaphorically. Such is life. I struggle to hear myself think on the train or in the street for people on bawling into their mobile phones, and I often struggle to get served in busy pubs because I’m quiet, am under six foot and not the sort to barge others out of the way. And I’ve found myself wondering ‘what the hell do I have to do to get noticed?’ Standing on a table and shouting ‘Jesus is a cunt’ at the top of my lungs is an option I’ve considered more than once, but never actually tried. Yet.
But some people are less reserved than I am, and are clearly more desperate for attention, and this has been highlighted quite clearly in a couple of news items that have been running this week. Step forward Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross. I don’t really feel the need to recap on the sequence of events here: for those outside the UK or who have spent the last week living in an underground bunker, it’s all over the Internet. And that’s just the point. Yes, their antics were ill-conceived, idiotic, and yes, they were likely to cause offence. But surely the recipient of the phone messages should be the one to determine the level of offence taken, not the public at large. If you don’t like something, steer clear.
I think Russell Brand’s a tit, and make every effort to avoid him and his work. No-one’s forcing me to listen. Analogously, as a vegetarian, you won’t find me walking into a butcher’s and complaining because I don’t like all the meat on display. That the radio show aired with the approval of their bosses is perhaps surprising, but not nearly as surprising as the media frenzy that has dominated the headlines these last few days. You’d think that all wars had ended, that there was no global financial crisis and that the US election was as insignificant as events come. In short, it’s been blown out of all proportion.
Make no mistake, the general public love a good moral outcry and attendant which hunt. And the media is always more than happy to precipitate one, and to keep those fires stoked. And now everyone’s happy because high-level management have been unseated, Brand’s resigned and Woss has been suspended for 12 weeks without pay and his future remains uncertain. But hang on. Ross is on £6M a year. He’s not going to starve, is he? He might have to keep warm burning coal instead of twenty quid notes, but even if he dos lose his job, he’ll not be unemployed for long. And as for Brand... well, he’s made a career out of shrieking for attention, and probably will be seen standing on a table shouting ‘Jesus is a cunt’ if he reads this article and thinks it might get him noticed. Because he’s a desperate and sad case, and this is the kind of publicity that few dare to dream of. Really, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
British artist Sarah Maple may disagree. Touted as ‘the new Tracy Emin,’ her current exhibition, ‘This Artist Blows’ has incurred the wrath of Muslims angered by her works, which include a painting of a Moslem woman cradling a pig. The gallery has received threatening phone calls and has even had its window put through in protest. And of course, the attention this has brought to Maple’s work has been phenomenal. Raised as a Moslem in Britain, and given that she claims to be addressing issues of (multi)cultural identity, this should probably be considered a good thing.
But assuming there is no such thing as bad publicity, there is such a thing as bad art. And checking out her website, I was struck by just how lacking in artistry her work is. There are a lot of poorly-composed photographic self-portraits. And while many artists turn to themselves as subject for many reasons, there does seem to be a surfeit of me me me-ness about Maple’s pictures, as if she wants to be the artist celebrity, instantly recognisable from her own works. There’s also an overemphasis on clever knowingness: the picture of Maple wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Have you wanked over me yet?’ is not only blatant, but presumptuous in the extreme. The ‘I Heart Jihad’ T-shirt is similarly lacking subtlety, while the ‘cocks’ photo series, which features the artist posing with various objects which range from a coat-hanger (‘hanger cock’) to a cup (‘cup cock’) in front of her crotch may be amusing if you’re a 16 year old pratting about on MySpace http://www.myspace.com/sarahmapleart or Bebo, but it’s hardly big and it’s hardly clever and it’s hardly art.
The piece of card with its price (£10,000) written in black pen, and the one that states ‘I am an investment’ may be a comment on art as commodity, but Stewart Home was cleverer on that front over a decade ago, just as Duchamp was way back when. And of course, the gag only works if Maple becomes, and remains, collectable. I daresay the controversy over her current exhibition will help achieve that. That Maple describes herself as a ‘self-confessed media whore’ seemingly without any sense that this debases her other objective – namely to draw attention to ‘issues – only adds credence to the notion that she’s as desperate for attention as Brand, and how she gets that attention isn’t really a concern.
I don’t mean to sound stuffy or churlish, and I appreciate the power of shock tactics to draw attention to serious issues as well as the next man, and possibly better. But concept only works when substantiated by execution. And the power of shock lies in its unexpectedness. And if it’s been done before, and been done better before, then it’s hardly unexpected. And then there are the issues that the shock is intended to highlight. It really doesn’t have the same potency if you’ve nothing to say for yourself. It’s the artistic equivalent of knocking on the door and then running away. Mildly amusing the first time, perhaps, but vaguely pointless.
So one has to ask if Maple can be surprised by the reaction her exhibition has provoked, particularly in the current climate (fuelled again, at least in part by the media. Let’s face it, race relations have been better and paranoia has been better contained and less obviously prone to breaking into hysteria.) Which leaves only one conclusion. The real subject is the ego, and her art is, ultimately, the equivalent of standing on a table and shouting. So maybe I should try it, and when the bar staff try to throw me out for being offensive and causing trouble, I’ll tell them it’s performance art. Or maybe I’ll just shut up and accept the fact that I’ll have to wait a bit longer for my pint. Really, I know that drawing attention to myself might help shift a few books, but I’m not that desperate for attention.