I was an art student – a pretty crappy one, but still. I loved art. Please note the past tense. Back in my young and idealistic days, art filled the gaps. In the 2011 film, This Must Be the Place, Sean Penn’s character tells David Byrne (playing himself) that the artist is the greatest of all things. I’m inclined to believe that. There is no greater being on the planet than the artist.
“the artist is the greatest of all things”
And I mean the true artist.
Now we’re in trouble, because what the hell does that mean? Well, in my not so humble and incredibly grumpy opinion, there are way too few of them around. In the Felicity Street series, the principal of an art school states any monkey with a stick can learn to draw, but art is the prevue of the few. Not everyone can be an artist. I know some incredibly talented people who can draw and photograph but whom I would not classify as artists. Do I know people I would consider artists? Yes. Three of them. I won’t embarrass them by naming them here, but let’s just say they make my coveted list of artists.
So, what sets these people apart from the visual clutter that floods our lives?
To illustrate this, I want to cite a YouTube video I saw yesterday, which inspired today’s Sunday Sermon. In the video, the narrator says (and I paraphrase) art these days is created to illicit thought. Art is meant to make one think, not to create admiration.
And boy, did that one hit home!
Tell me, ever heard this one: “Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed”. Oh, how profound, how subversive. How naïve. What a crock of shit. It’s the type of thing an angry, mopey, 15-year-old emo kid with mommy issues would come up with. No, it is not a should; it’s a can. Art can comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, but that’s hardly its only mission statement. The problem comes in many people think it is. Art these days is all about “getting a response”, and funnily enough, that response is never admiration but always revulsion. Tracy Emin’s My Bed comes to mind. Three-quarters of Damien Hirst’s stuff. David Hockney’s childlike drawing of Harry Styles. That abomination of King Charles. None of it is about beauty and admiration but about getting a visceral response.
You know, I had a visceral response to some bad chicken once, too.
But once, I had another visceral response, one of my favourite art stories. I was a young art student walking through the Johannesburg Art Gallery (A feat one would not want to attempt in 2025). There were a few great things in there. Penelope Siopis’ Melancholia was, is, one of my fave pieces. But the Joburg art gallery is bigger than you think it is, and there are many halls and galleries I’ve not been to yet. But the day was getting late, time for exploration was over, and I needed to hurry up and catch the bus home. (Ah, the good old days we had a functional public transport system…). I was scurrying through one of the side halls when something caught my eye, and I recoiled as if I got sucker punched by Mike Tyson, but in a good way. Whatever I saw in my rush to get to the exit had the mental equivalent of shoving a harpoon in the back of my brain and reeled me in. I cliché’d and stopped in my tracks, turned round, and there was a painting on the wall which literally – and I mean literally – reduced me to tears. It was absolutely beautiful. All I knew was this artwork captured me, invited me, and just about devoured me in its pure beauty.
So, I shuffled over to see who was this artist who managed to grab me hook, line, and sinker.
I do not know which work it was; it was in the pre-internet dark ages, and my memory does not stretch back 30 years. The internet is not very helpful, and there is no way in god’s green earth I’m going to the Joburg city centre to find out, but the fact of the matter is in a forgotten little corner in a shitty little gallery there hangs a minor and forgotten painting by Claude Monet which even in its third-rate status among the artist’s work was so damn beautiful it managed to get an angry and frustrated young wannabe artist to stare gape-mouthed at the pure beauty of this painting.
Why can’t we do that anymore? Why do we hail Banksy as the god of contemporary art? As some wit said, the difference between Banksy and vandalism is marketing. Piero Manzoni literally shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold, and, to quote the Eagles, Jesus, people bought ‘em! What passes for performance art these days… the shite that passes for “music”. Even the Plastic Ono Band had fantastic music if one could edit out Yoko’s unearthly vocals, which has no right to be in the same time zone as “singing”.
In a mere 100 years, we’ve moved from Klimt and van Gogh to Banksy and Hirst.
Art is a bridge between the soul and the world.
– Gustav Klimt
Can we please bring back art that we can admire? Art that inspires? Art which visceral response is more than revulsion and repulsion (and the occasional pointless confusion)? Art these days is grotesque. Just go look at anything the Tate is offering these days.
Art has historically been a way to make sense of a hellish world. It added beauty and admiration to the terror of existence. It helped us understand the way we interacted with the world. Now, art is about the artists expressing their own anxieties and displaying their own lack of skill and Jesus, people lap it up like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet at a sleazy casino off the Vegas strip.
But all is not lost. As said, locally, I know three people whom I’d consider artists. Two of them have day jobs. Only one of them is a full-time artist. On my Instagram, I found a few. Michael Carson does some interesting things. Will Rochefort will never be seen by historians as a great and influential artist, but his work is beautiful and fun. (I’d also add Hajime Kinoko as an artist, but that may be controversial). Are these to guys “great artists”? Probably not, no. They are not going to stop me in my tracks in the Joburg Art Gallery. But they are proof that there is still some beauty in art, and that, my friends, is worth its weight in oil paint.
…and I’ve not even started on architecture. Le Corbusier is an affront to humanity and… And I’m gonna leave it here.
(PS: No, I do not consider myself an artist. But I admire them, which is why I’m frustrated there are so few of them around.)
