Art (not just) for Art's Sake

Last year I read the revised edition of Suzi Gablik's 1984 book Has Modernism Failed which dealt quite a lot with how divorced from the "world" art was becoming in the 20th Century - disappearing up its own fundament in a post-modern frenzy of self-congratulation and self-flagellation.

Well here we are in the 21st Century, I wonder if anything is different? I think there is a movement towards more meaningful engagement - but perhaps that is because I don't really look to the art world "greats", the largely male celebrity figures of the art world for my artistic fix. I'd rather stick with the marginal figures, the unknowns, the gallery system rejects and refuseniks. I don't really want some totalitarian style social realism, neither am I normally turned on by agit-prop - nevertheless I do sometimes enjoy an art piece which actually says something.


I've recently seen a few things that "say something" which I've quite enjoyed. Graphic work by James Joyce for the Stop Climate Chaos campaign - some of his work is currently on display at The Social. Photo-montages by veteran trouble maker Peter Kennard (sadly I missed his recent exhibition). Christian Brett and Gee Vaucher's installation at the Gillespie gallery last year. In these works the politics, while central, do not take over to the denigration of their artistic appeal. That is to say that the aesthetics and the politics are in symbiosis, rather than one being in service to the other.

But for some reason I still find Mark Wallinger's Tate Britain installation "State Britain" a bit wanky. Not that I have seen it in the flesh, but the whole idea seems to be to take a political act and turn into an artistic one. I think maybe I'm looking for something going in the opposite direction?

IMAGES: Santa's Ghetto (2006) by Peter Kennard; Dump the Dinosaurs (2006) by James Joyce; the sound of stones in the glass house (2006) by Christian Brett and Gee Vaucher; and Brian Haw's Protest (2006?) photographed by Mark Wallinger.