Antony Gormley

22 July 2009

In the context of the collapse of communism and the pressure on socialist values to find their “market position” some articulation from the position of an artist might be useful.

The need for parliamentary reform and possible ways forward has been well articulated by Greg Dyke. We are better informed, better educated and better able to take part in creating a common future. Cheap communication tools give us the means of a truly participatory democracy. Our culture has become diverse and hybridic. It is one of the great achievements of this government that the museums are free, within them there is a genuine taste both institutionally and amongst the public for engagement, intellectual and emotional.

Artists today are dealing increasingly with real life issues, but equally the public seem ready to take a gamble on new experiences even if the form of them is unfamiliar. Never before has the possibility for art to recognise its position as a transformational zone within an evolving global world been clearer. Previously international art resulted from a notion of an avant- garde that come from a variety of western centres Paris, New York and recently London. Ever since the ground-breaking show “Magiciens de la Terre” in Paris in 1989 the map of where art can come from has been changed and the view that there was some kind of “international” mainstream of artistic development challenged – art can now be made by anyone and come from anywhere. The freedoms that art claimed for itself in the 20th century can now be offered back to its public, us, the viewers and not as passive spectators but as active producers.

When Ernst Gombrich talked about the “beholders Share” and Duchamp said that the viewer “does half of the work” these were the preliminary remarks that has resulted today in the possibility of a truly democratic engagement with art. Previously who could patronise, be represented in, own or commission art was in the hands of an elite and the cognoscenti. With the opening of our museums and the sharing of the question as to what constitutes a culture (in the recognition that this is changing) everyone is involved in its production. Gilbert and George’s dictum “Art for All” is becoming a reality. Never has the interest and participation in art events been so universal and engaged. In this context the continued fight to allow and extend agency to the viewer becomes ever more possible and important.

We are now in the position to use art as a test site for the evolution of individual self-confidence and participation. We can recognise that the market and exchange value of art is less important than its transformational one.

We are in a position to encourage and extend the practice and display of creative skills in the visual, dramatic and musical arenas of education as important tools of individuation and communication.

We can defend it as a basic human right. We have to continue the good work of the Arts Council in bringing the best work to the widest audiences and rewarding risk and innovation across forms. I have just returned from Moscow and a show at the Garage and was amazed and delighted by the open-mindedness of public’s reaction to the work. It is hard not to return to the example of Malevich and his insistence in the Suprematist Manifesto that art can be the opening to a new realm of feeling.

“Art is what you do Culture is what is done to you” was Carl Andre the American Sculptor’s view however I believe that it is the task of the left to collapse this division and encourage a participatory engagement in an art that gives shape to the values of an ever more diverse people.

I cannot end without mentioning Architecture. Architecture: the concrete expression of our civic values and social relations. If we believe in the development of our multi-ethnic society we must find civic forms that counter to the ubiquitous technocracy of the international airport with a domestic architecture that answers the needs of density and sustainability but also learns from the experience of those who have inhabited the social housing of the post-war years.. This needs two things: firstly the empowering of the client (a greater engagement with architecture in schools) and secondly the changing of the status and creative input of the planner to one of co-producer and innovator rather than judger and preserver of the status quo.

5 Comments

5 Responses to “Antony Gormley”

ratshackman
July 22nd, 2009 @ 7:43 pm

Fascinating article but based on a political standpoint which misses the entire point about “what being on the left” SHOULD mean.

Your refer to living in an age of “Cheap communication tools” which “give us the means of a truly participatory democracy”.

They may well give you and I the means of participating, but you ignore the disenfranchised millions to whom a home computer is a luxury they can ill afford, for whom a miobile phone is also unaffordable.

My friend, THAT is what being on the left today is about: enfranchising the millions the political classes have dumped in the cold while they feather their nests.

We need to find ways of getting everyone in this country FED. Then we need to ensure they have DECENT affordable homes. Then AND ONLY THEN might we begin to consider whether we also need to provide them with these “cheap” tools.

I came to this site in hope. I leave – today – more disilusioned thatn ever
Robert Roberts
July 22nd, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

“Cheap communication tools give us the means of a truly participatory democracy.”

And yet Open Left is full of the same old Special Interest Groups?
cecinestpasunargument
July 23rd, 2009 @ 1:53 pm

All valid observations, but what does any of this have to do with left or right?
Ian Bennett
July 23rd, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

I wonder whether Mr Gormley would be prepared to tell us how much of his output is funded privately and voluntarily, and how much is subsidized by the taxpayer. (The latter category would include funding by tax-maintained bodies such as the Arts Council.) I suspect that the answer to this question would give an insight into his views.
ratshackman
July 24th, 2009 @ 8:23 am

READ what I said: Perhaps you are ANOTHER example of the pseudo intellectuals who have siezed power in this country. One of the easy identifying traits is an inability/unwillingness to read/write beyond a headline.