Manet Blockbuster

Picture: British Museum

On the opening day of the Royal Academy Manet show, the Guardian hosted a discussion on the merits of blockbusters, loaded with cliches and specious arguments.  The show at the RA is described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ... after all, it's almost two years since the last Manet blockbuster.  The craziest argument (against tough competition) is the claim that, "To create a blockbuster exhibition is quite a political statement, it says something broader than just 'Manet: a great artist'. It says – to a government that couldn't care less about the arts – that people love culture."*  I just don't know what to say to that.

 

Then there's the claim that, "If you go to a blockbuster you shouldn't necessarily think it's all about the art – it's about the crowd, too."  So you pay the RA £15 for the privilege of hanging out in a scrum?  You can do that on the London Underground, still for slightly less money than the RA charges. 

 

I like Manet and I live in London, but I don't think I'll go.  The RA puts on some of the crassest crowd-pleasers and draws the biggest crowds.  You never see very much.  I queued up for opening time to get a few quiet minutes at a recent exhibition, but the galleries were already mobbed with well-heeled invitees to private early-doors viewings.  I'm especially appalled that they're now offering a less crowded Sunday night viewing ('Enhance your visit') at £30 a head - double the normal rate - including a drink and an audio guide.  It would be worth paying to get a quiet view, but I don't believe that they will keep numbers sufficiently low, I want to see art not have a drink and I don't want an audio guide.  Above all I find it disgusting that they knowingly sell far more tickets than can be compatible with anyone seeing anything during the normal time slots.

 

* Thanks to Gareth Harris for flagging this quotation on Twitter, @garethhar

Conventional Thinking

Photo: Art Newspaper

Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist who appeals to me, even as a hardened fogey who hates most contemporary art.  Some of his interventions in museums are quite witty.  I love that he dressed as a guard to give an artist's guided tour, and was of course not recognised by the patrons.  But there are only so many ways to make the point about exclusionary practises in museums; his work is losing its edge and becoming a bit repetitive.  And I'm not sure his criticism has bite any more.  Museums are falling over themselves trying to prove their inclusive credentials and highlight historical sins. 

Fred Wilson's upcoming exhibition in Cleveland "attempts to undermine the discourse-determining status of cultural institutions, almost from the inside out, by employing those institutions' own vocabularies, concepts and methods".  So many redundant words, so little content.  You have to know something of Foucault's concept of 'discourse' for this even to make sense - this guff is so much more exclusive and elitist than the old fashioned stuff that it criticises.  Then that weasel-word 'almost' - why 'almost' from the inside out? 

We're told that he's a political activist infiltrating museums.  His works "speak to the realization that culture is almost never homogeneous".  The terminology is conventional and banal.  Who ever said that culture was homogeneous?  This is the new insider art, and these are the new conventional ideas, dressed up as radical infiltration.