British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet [Paperback]

When Marcel Duchamp declared his readymade urinal Fountain to be art in 1917, it was a fundamental challenge to the idea of the art object itself. If anything can be art just because it happens to be in an art gallery, then nothing is art. Duchamp soon took this to its logical conclusion and abandoned making art altogether, taking up chess instead. "It cannot be commercialized", he explained. "It has all the beauty of art and much more". Marginalised for nearly half a century, he came into fashion with the anti-art movements of the 1960s, a hero for the counter-culture generation in its quest to subvert authority and change the world.
Many of the radical students and artists became the new teachers and lecturers in the booming art colleges and universities of the 1960s and 70s: art was now taught alongside political, social and cultural theory. Like terrorists turned governments, the former revolutionaries became well-paid academics, indoctrinating students with the new orthodoxy. In 2004, a poll of 500 `art-world experts' voted Duchamp's Fountain the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Surely the irascible old intellectual would be rolling with laughter? Unless, of course, he is too busy turning in his grave - the great iconoclast now firmly enshrined as the darling of the establishment.
Though a big idea, at least Duchamp's urinal was quite small. Irritatingly, the BAS7 generation seems obsessed with creating installations which monopolise vast floor spaces, films and performances which demand lengthy periods of viewers' time and videos that require mini-cinemas. At its core appears an unshakeable belief in the significance of what they do and the importance of what they have to say. This egotism is reinforced by a more recent product of the colleges: the ubiquitous `curator', the Simon Cowells of the art world. And BAS7's curators have certainly adopted the X Factor's hyperbole: `The curators of the biggest art exhibition ever held in Plymouth say visitors will have their view of the world changed by what they see', reports the local press. `Co-curator Mr. Morton said, "They (the artists) are in the business of communication and want to connect with your soul".' This is even more risible because intelligible communication doesn't appear to be one of their strong points.
The whole exhibition is accompanied by reams of literature (or should I say `spin'?), which, when it isn't parodying Pseud's Corner, makes more dodgy claims than an Ebay seller. David Noonan's figures `populate a theatrical landscape somewhere between reality and illusion'. Though there are `suggestions of images' in Varda Caivano's paintings, `form is ultimately elusive and deceptive. They are abstract but often suggest spatial illusion.' This `it's both this thing and at the same time its opposite' must be Lesson One in the colleges' `Marketing Your Work (sorry, Practice)' courses because they're all at it. Phoebe Unwin's canvasses are `underlined by a constant and ambiguous play between figuration and abstraction'. Viewing Christian Marclay's epic 24 hour film The Clock, `we inhabit two worlds, that of fiction and that of fact'. Meanwhile, Edgar Schmitz `has produced sound and video interventions to complement the exhibition whilst remaining ambiguously distanced from it'. Look Edgar, just tell us, are you in or are you out? Both, no doubt would be his reply. Best of all though, performance artist Sue Tompkins spoken performances are said to `re-energise language and give it new meaning'. Now, even if we dubiously accept it's possible to give language new meaning, we might award that accolade to a James Joyce or Ezra Pound but log on youtube and see for yourself if you would place Sue alongside them. Have they no sense of embarrassment? Who is teaching them this stuff?
The `Artists A-Z' exhibition guide highlights the trendiest jargon with anything to do with `narrative' a resounding winner: in The Clock `as each new clip appears a new narrative is suggested'; David Noonan ` brings images together to create new narratives'; Olivia Plender is `interested in exposing the ideological framework around the narration of history'; Elizabeth Price sees her work `not as a failed project but as an unfulfilled narrative'; predictably both Sue Tompkins and Tris Vonna-Michel `deliver fractured (you've guessed it) narratives'. I left feeling that if I ever heard that word again, it won't be their narratives that are fractured.
Does the art itself transcend the hype? Unfortunately, not really. From Steven Claydon's performance piece reminiscent of Peter Gabriel on a bad night to Spartacus Chetwynd's Blue-Peter inspired Folding House, it's much what you would expect to see in any art college degree show these days. Despite the show's `cutting edge' banner, it all struck me as rather tired and sterile, and left me feeling nostalgic for London in the early 1970s when these new art forms briefly seemed fresh and challenging. In a different context, you could probably give the benefit of the doubt to George Shaw's urban paintings for instance or David Noonan's monochrome tapestry, but after a while it becomes hard to stifle a yawn and see it as anything other than an Arts Council travelling circus. It's a depressing thought that this might represent the best of the last five years of British (state) art - now `art practice' has been well and truly democratised, I wonder how they even judge `best'.
All this wouldn't really matter as there's no reason why artists shouldn't do whatever they like. The problem is that we're all paying for it. The sheer cost of the construction, transport, assembling, storage, curation, administration, marketing, running and staffing of `In the Days of the Comet' in four national venues must be, well, astronomic. Just the other week, the press reported that a number of local councils had been forced to sell off various art works to meet public spending targets, including paintings by John Everett Millais and Paul Feiler, artists who comprise a small part of the history of British art. Effectively that history is being sold to subsidise the careers of artists who may well never be heard of again, and worse still, the galleries who represent them commercially, whose names are subtly advertised with `courtesy of...' Our `cultural industries' have been cleverly manipulated by vested commercial and spurious ideological interests - nothing new there I hear you say but let's at least recognise it for what it is instead of pretending that it's all for society's well-being. The most important message of the counter-culture seems to have been quickly forgotten: that we should never get fooled again.