ARTS
Raising art's profile
Mark Glazebrook on a show which should be viewed with both seriousness and humour There is an impressively death-like wax- work and mixed-media self-portrait of Gavin Turk as Che Guevara in the Saatchi Gallery right now. Similarly, the original Damien Hirst death-consciousness is kept alive by the disgusting stench of countless fag-ends from his gigantic, beautiful, white ashtray. It makes Claes Oldenburg's huge but odourless cigarette butt seem like olde- worlde good taste from the 1960s.
The mood of Hirst's suggestive and imaginative 'Contemplating a Self Portrait (as a Pharmacist)' is quite different. He has created an imaginary studio in one of his typical vitrines, which are normally used for cows and sharks in formaldehyde. It has two compartments. One of them contains a smaller vitrine in which we see an easel, a canvas covered with a yellow layer of underpainting and an artist's or chemist's white smock. In the bigger vitrine is a table acting as a palette and laid out invitingly with freshly squeezed oil paint. There is also a mirror with the words 'I love you' scrawled on it. Narcissism of the self-por- traitist? A message from a woman? Or a teasing quotation from one of Tracey Emin's wall hangings? However ambiguous the meaning, the predominant air is touch- ingly nostalgic for the sort of handmade, non-mechanical painting that Hirst does the opposite of in his spot paintings.
Nearby is a work by Sarah Lucas about sex not being the reserve of the YBAs' generation. Mid- dle-aged, middle-class people with reproduction furniture are at it too, she points out. Two dining chairs which might have come from Harrods are dressed up, or semi-clothed for the act, in white underclothes and a bra from John Lewis. 'At least they're clean,' said my companion, who likes to look on the bright side of modern art.
The Saatchi Gallery is always a pleasure to visit, if only for its superbly designed and lit exhibition spaces. The presentation of the shows is never less than masterly. I did not see Sensation's anagramatic descen- dant, Ant Noises 1, which ran from April to August this year, so I'm in no position to say, as some have done, that Ant Noises 2 is stale buns in comparison. There is new work by many of the same artists. Jake and Dinos 'penis nose' Chapman, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk and the painters Gary Hume, Jenny Saville and Richard Patterson survive from Ant Noises 1. (It's encouraging for painters and their public to see that Charles Saatchi firmly rejects the silly notion that painting is dead.) Out go three of the most talented 'Contempla ting a Self Portrait (as a Pharmacist)' 1998, by Damien Hirst Sensation artists, Ron 'Dead Dad' Mueck, Chris 'elephant dung' Ofili and Rachel `House' Whiteread. In comes Tracey Emin.
The catalogue illustrates an early paint- ing by Emin of a Turkish boat in the Med- way. It is correctly dubbed 'expressionist' in a well-written introduction by Gemma de Cruz. It's not in the show but it does estab- lish some modest credentials for her as an artist rather than as someone famous for being famous. She has a room to herself. The walls contain examples of her appliqued blankets. One of them reads as follows: 'HOW COULD I EVER LEAVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I SEARCH THE WORLD. I KISS YOU. I'M WET WITH FEAR. I AM INTERNATIONAL WOMAN.' Is this literature or sewing? Or a cry for help? One thing is certain: just as Emin's bed won the unofficial publicity prize with- out winning the actual Turner Prize this year, so her beach but from Whitstable has provided the main publicity for Ant Noises 2.
To be more precise, it was not the actual battered, blue beach but that got the main publicity, although it is a beautiful and intriguing enough ready-made object in its way. (Nostalgia strikes again — for sand, wind, sandwiches and sex, probably.) What attracted the newspaper photographers were the untitled iris prints of Tracey, modestly in the buff, squatting inside on the floor. These images are less blue than the beach hut. Her attraction is that she seems prepared to share her most vulnera- ble, intimate moments with the general public. Her own generation empathises. She has called her ready-made beach but `The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here'.
Some impulse, probably fear, drove our palaeolith- ic ancestors to make marks and objects — sym- bols of stability, perhaps, in the turmoil of the uni- verse, or attempts to gain magical powers over wild animals in the case of cave paintings. Later, these interpretations were called art. Now an east- coast beach but has become a symbol of tur- moil, in the stability of the Saatchi Gallery in north London. The hut's former owner, an artist, has become the wild creature. Whether Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marcel Duchamp or Andy Warhol bears most responsibility for this weird state of affairs, I do not know.
It is easy enough to ridicule some of the work of some of the artists that Charles Saatchi collects. The fact remains that Sen- sation at the Royal Academy was an amaz- ingly successful exhibition, which has proved influential with curators as well as artists. It has been too influential for some critics, but it brought out a new public for modern art. This new public wanted to be shocked, educated and amused; no knowl- edge of art history was required. Sensation rang the tills usefully at the Royal Acade- my, which is unsubsidised by the state. Even the exhibits that gave childishness a bad name added a helpful variety to the show as a whole. That the London publicity focused on an image of Myra Hindley and the New York publicity on perceived reli- gious irreverence may have been upsetting to some people, but that's how publicity works. In an artist, an excessive interest in publicity for its own sake is unhealthy. For a gallery, publicity is just part of the job.
It is true that Charles Saatchi is a seller as well as a buyer of art. That is his busi- ness. He also gives art to museums and is influential among the small group which controls some of our best public gallery spaces. Surely this is a more admirable role in the art world than that of the influential critic, with an impressive grounding in art history, who instead of ignoring the mod- ern art for which he has no feeling uses his Command of column inches and demon- strates his journalistic skills again and again to pander to public prejudice about it.
Having had mixed feelings about what may well be a trivialisation of art, I've come to the conclusion that cheeky, outrageous, naughty, bad-boy, bad-girl, even disgusting art (with the possible sick exception of the Chapman brothers' penis-nosed children) is preferable to a dreadful alternative — a strict diet of safe, uncreative, unsurprising gentility: lifeless oils, say, and old-maidish watercolours. One of the saddest and most boring shows I've ever seen was by mem- bers of the official USSR Union of Artists, in Moscow.
I take the point that it is hard on hon- ourable, talented, conventionally minded students who slave to develop a traditional skill only to find that the limelight has been stolen by a beach but from Whitstable. On the other hand, there is almost certainly a demand for such students' work, too, in today's pluralistic art world. The Saatchi Collection and Gallery continue to help raise the profile of contemporary art. In England we have long been embarrassingly provincial and backward in this respect. The works in Ant Noises 2 should be viewed with a judicious mixture of serious- ness and humour, respect and disrespect in other words, in the spirit in which they appear to have been offered.
Ant Noises 2 is at the Saatchi Gallery, 98A Boundary Road, NW8, until 26 November.
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