I’ve always found the debate over high and low culture slightly stale and irrelevant. Contrived stand offs between Bob Dylan and Beethoven bore the pants off me. Besides, I’ve swallowed enough post structuralist critiques of elitist hierarchies of value to know that popular culture is a valid subject for intellectual reflection. Plus, Put Yourself In My Place is, like, one of my favourite songs ever. So the debate about whether the V&A should put on a show about Kylie Minogue struck me at first as a non-issue, pandering to the worst kind of lazy middlebrow snobbery. Then I went to the exhibition...
Kylie: The Exhibition consists of a display of stage outfits and costumes, ranging from the mechanic’s overalls she wore in Neighbours to the bizarre Dolce and Gabbana designs of her current Showgirl Homecoming tour. Alongside these are displayed Kylie’s record covers, tour artefacts, videos, a re-creation of her dressing room and a vending machine of Kylie endorsed mineral water.
Aside from a number of text panels, there’s little commentary or interpretation and the objects are displayed in a flatly literal manner. Such labelling as there is makes a pretty lame and unconvincing case for why Kylie Minogue’s costumes should be in the V&A in the first place. Words like ‘icon’ and ‘phenomenon’ are bandied about but these terms are now so lazily over deployed as to be almost meaningless and their use here seems particularly half-hearted and pointless. The costs and logistics of putting on Kylie’s tours are listed but not contrasted with anything that might make them make more interesting or compelling or anything other than blandly impressive. Her dressing room is re-created but not to make a point, just to fill up some space. The labelling for this reaches a zenith of banality. It is, we are told; “…very special, a home away from home”. Even better than this is the information that: “..road cases are the best way to transport her extensive wardrobe”. Gosh.
The exhibition has been bought in from Australia where it was originally shown at The Arts Centre, Melbourne. It comes across as shallow hagiography without even the spitefulness of heat!, or the inadvertent vileness of Hello. It is, rather, the authorised biography.
Like her latest persona, Kylie: The Exhibition has a camp “Darling! You look fabulous” quality. This is only heightened by the cod surrealism of her Showgirls tour and her recent entry into the tragic diva hall of fame by becoming officially A Survivor. But the show achieves Susan Sontag’s definition of campness as an attempt at seriousness that fails. It wants to be culturally relevant and daringly iconoclastic, but lacks the courage or savvy to know how. It is also shamelessly sycophantic and utterly without critical reflection.
This is not about pop culture’s place in the museum. The V&A is full of pop culture already after all, and has a distinguished history of putting on exhibitions about costume and design. I didn’t dislike this show because I thought it too lowbrow, or too commercial or too vulgar. I disliked it because it was dull and po-faced and vaguely moronic. There is a thoroughly bathetic moment at the end when as you leave, you find yourself inadvertently wandering into the Medieval rooms of the V&A. From Kylie’s gold hotpants to Trajan’s column in a few steps. It’s not a flattering comparison.
Just before leaving, there is one more tribute to Kylie: a wall on which you can stick little heart shaped personal tributes. Thus in a faintly sinister way, you’re not even allowed express anything but love for Kylie. Alongside sycophantic quotes from the likes of Manolo Blahnik, Peter Huntley of the V&A has given us the benefit of his insight: “Kylie’s fun to sing along to.” Thanks Peter.
Showing posts with label Exhibitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exhibitions. Show all posts
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Monday, June 20, 2005
More Black, Vicar?
Exhibition Review: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
For two months of the summer, the Royal Academy is full, rammed to the rafters, with contemporary paintings: some by famous artists, many by Royal Academicians, hundreds of others sent in by amateur artists. The number on display is vast – there are 1333 works here - and in some rooms no wall space is left visible. This is the Summer Exhibition, arts equivalent of Wimbledon or Glyndbourne: very middle-class, very English and very popular.
What’s it like? Exhausting, mainly. After a while, the paintings of houses and hillsides and cats, and more cats, and coy nudes and impasto cityscapes and hazy Venetian canals meld into one vaguely hallucinatory experience that, coupled with the constant background hum of Posh People’s Voices, causes a strangely genteel form of sensory overload. By the half-way point - room 4, lot number 666 (which isn’t a picture of the devil but the Garden Pond, Mistley) - I was starting to suffer from burn-out. An afternoon in the Summer Exhibition feels like taking a tour of a thousand Islington front rooms via Cork Street whilst leafing through Modern Painters and a few copies of Country Life for good measure. It dawned on me, as I progressed, just how many artists there are in this country. I wonder if everyone is secretly off at the weekends, easel in hand, gauche in pocket, to the Lake District, or the Fens, or sketching their husband looking pensive in the front room.
Anyway, there are lots of paintings called things like: Storm Passing, Gulls Flying or Seated Model From Behind, and some excruciating puns such as The Man Who Drew Too Much. Various famous and redoubtable characters are included such as Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Gillian Ayres and the late Eduardo Paolozzi. There is a vaguely homo-erotic painting of a blue sailor painted by a Holly Johnson. Could it really be the Holly Johnson? Surely not. Anyway, it had sold one copy, hopefully not to Holly Johnson. Old RA veteran Anthony Green, who I remember from childhood trips to this exhibition, has his usual 117 pieces in and, I was greatly relieved to see, is still including saucy shots of his missus in them. If people aren’t out on the hillside capturing birds in flight they generally tend to be in the studio being vaguely salacious so, typically, David Mach contributes an enormous sculpture of a naked woman made entirely from Dominoes. And it’s called Dominatrix. No, really.
There is a smattering of more contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tracy Emin, and Mark Quinn. There are photos by Sam Taylor Wood and Andreas Gursky. Michael Craig Marin contributes a tricksy computer animation. And, I was just wondering whether Julian Opie would pop up, when lo and behold, he did. There is also a special room devoted to Ed Ruscha, who’s conceptually clarity and focus came as a startling shock in the context.
Finally, and with some sense of relief I found the architecture room. Home turf I thought. Mind you, even the curators seem to have given up by this point, professing ignorance of the contents of the room and of architecture in general. Traditionally, this room gives architecture something of a bad name with practices chucking in a couple of curling competition boards they had hanging around the office. There are also lots of antiseptic white models of urban plazas or perspex office blocks and the odd little sketch of a house in the country. At least you are safe from pictures of cats in here.
Worst thing in the room has to be Michael Manser’s proposals for Heathrow Terminal 5 which looks as horrible as you might imagine Heathrow Terminal 5 could look. There are some nice drawings by the late Ralf Erskine which speak very much of their own period. Other highlights include a huge model of Will Alsop’s ‘Chips’ building, which has plastic fish in it, and some very nice drawings by CJ Lim of a landmark proposal for the 2012 Paris Olympics.
Overall, the Summer Exhibition leaves you reeling with the sheer monstrous amount of it all, unable to make much sense of individual works. Like most classic English days out it seems to exist partly as an excuse to drink tea and eat a lot of cake immediately afterwards. I certainly needed to sit down. Possibly, at my own easel. Now, if I can just catch the quality of that passing Cumulo Nimbus…more black, MORE BLACK!!…..
For two months of the summer, the Royal Academy is full, rammed to the rafters, with contemporary paintings: some by famous artists, many by Royal Academicians, hundreds of others sent in by amateur artists. The number on display is vast – there are 1333 works here - and in some rooms no wall space is left visible. This is the Summer Exhibition, arts equivalent of Wimbledon or Glyndbourne: very middle-class, very English and very popular.
What’s it like? Exhausting, mainly. After a while, the paintings of houses and hillsides and cats, and more cats, and coy nudes and impasto cityscapes and hazy Venetian canals meld into one vaguely hallucinatory experience that, coupled with the constant background hum of Posh People’s Voices, causes a strangely genteel form of sensory overload. By the half-way point - room 4, lot number 666 (which isn’t a picture of the devil but the Garden Pond, Mistley) - I was starting to suffer from burn-out. An afternoon in the Summer Exhibition feels like taking a tour of a thousand Islington front rooms via Cork Street whilst leafing through Modern Painters and a few copies of Country Life for good measure. It dawned on me, as I progressed, just how many artists there are in this country. I wonder if everyone is secretly off at the weekends, easel in hand, gauche in pocket, to the Lake District, or the Fens, or sketching their husband looking pensive in the front room.
Anyway, there are lots of paintings called things like: Storm Passing, Gulls Flying or Seated Model From Behind, and some excruciating puns such as The Man Who Drew Too Much. Various famous and redoubtable characters are included such as Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Gillian Ayres and the late Eduardo Paolozzi. There is a vaguely homo-erotic painting of a blue sailor painted by a Holly Johnson. Could it really be the Holly Johnson? Surely not. Anyway, it had sold one copy, hopefully not to Holly Johnson. Old RA veteran Anthony Green, who I remember from childhood trips to this exhibition, has his usual 117 pieces in and, I was greatly relieved to see, is still including saucy shots of his missus in them. If people aren’t out on the hillside capturing birds in flight they generally tend to be in the studio being vaguely salacious so, typically, David Mach contributes an enormous sculpture of a naked woman made entirely from Dominoes. And it’s called Dominatrix. No, really.
There is a smattering of more contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tracy Emin, and Mark Quinn. There are photos by Sam Taylor Wood and Andreas Gursky. Michael Craig Marin contributes a tricksy computer animation. And, I was just wondering whether Julian Opie would pop up, when lo and behold, he did. There is also a special room devoted to Ed Ruscha, who’s conceptually clarity and focus came as a startling shock in the context.
Finally, and with some sense of relief I found the architecture room. Home turf I thought. Mind you, even the curators seem to have given up by this point, professing ignorance of the contents of the room and of architecture in general. Traditionally, this room gives architecture something of a bad name with practices chucking in a couple of curling competition boards they had hanging around the office. There are also lots of antiseptic white models of urban plazas or perspex office blocks and the odd little sketch of a house in the country. At least you are safe from pictures of cats in here.
Worst thing in the room has to be Michael Manser’s proposals for Heathrow Terminal 5 which looks as horrible as you might imagine Heathrow Terminal 5 could look. There are some nice drawings by the late Ralf Erskine which speak very much of their own period. Other highlights include a huge model of Will Alsop’s ‘Chips’ building, which has plastic fish in it, and some very nice drawings by CJ Lim of a landmark proposal for the 2012 Paris Olympics.
Overall, the Summer Exhibition leaves you reeling with the sheer monstrous amount of it all, unable to make much sense of individual works. Like most classic English days out it seems to exist partly as an excuse to drink tea and eat a lot of cake immediately afterwards. I certainly needed to sit down. Possibly, at my own easel. Now, if I can just catch the quality of that passing Cumulo Nimbus…more black, MORE BLACK!!…..
Friday, February 18, 2005
Oh Dear, I Don't Fancy Yours Much
Exhibition review: Beauty, Victoria Albert Museum.
“Beauty is a way of editing the world”, writes Stephen Bayley in the introduction to this exhibition at the V+A. Yes, but who would want to edit the world?
I’ve always had a soft spot for Stephen Bayley ever since he suggested that Nicholas Serota had no right being the director of The Tate because he drove a Volvo. It was camp nonsense, but it was funny camp nonsense. This exhibition, however, suggests that Bayley may not have had his tongue anywhere near his cheek when he said it.
Ostensibly, ‘Beauty’ is not really an exhibition at all. It’s actually a trail through the V+A’s permanent collection curated by Bayley. You pick up a catalogue at the front desk and follow the pink arrows around the V+A to objects that he has picked out as representing ideals of beauty. Following this trail to the letter, and ignoring everything else on the way, results in an excitingly random crash course in art history. The most obvious enjoyment of the show, however, is to challenge Bayley’s choice of objects and, thus, get to the nub of his own agenda. Such an approach pricks some holes in his wafer-thin notion of beauty and the usefulness of such a term to start with. For, surely, it is ultimately taste - not beauty - that is being celebrated here and, in particular, Bayley’s own hyper-urbane, ‘darling-one-simply-must-have-the-right-corkscrew’ kind of taste.
So off, and skipping some items, we go. Item 1 is Canova’s Sleeping Nymph which, Bayley informs us, has a ‘cold beauty’ that is ‘intensely erotic’. Which is another way of saying that Steven Bayley himself finds cold beauty intensely erotic. Personally, I find Sarah HYoarding from Girl’s Aloud intensely erotic but I’m not sure it constitutes a manifesto. Moving on, we get to admire a genuinely magnificent Chinese Imperial throne and a Samurai sword but ignore a splendid Fisherman’s Celebration Robe, enjoy a Japanese tea ceremony set, take in Michelangelo’s David, by-pass Metalwork in the Netherlands entirely, stop off to admire Donatello and arrive, oddly, at a photo of Brigitte Bardot by David Bailey. The suggestion that a sword, a tea set and Brigitte Bardot all contain some illusive yet transferable quality is unnerving to say the least.
Moving on, we find, unsurprisingly, that Bayley has little time for Victorian Silverware and thus misses out a truly magnificent eight-armed silver plated fruit bowl dispenser and picks some elegant glassware instead. After this, there are a couple of Arts and Crafts items and we are off into ‘The Modern Era’. Swatch watches, leather trousers and Katherine Hamnett’s ‘Stay Alive in ‘85’ t-shirt don’t make the grade but Olivetti’s typewriter somewhat boringly does. I completely missed Dieter Ram’s Braun radio, so I chose the Inter 6 Transistor Folding Portable Radio – which folds into a ‘space bracelet’ which, you have to admit, is pretty cool – instead.
There are no items picked from Marquetry 1650-1700 and we zip through South Asia without a bye or leave. In the Elizabethan paintings section, Bayley highlights a picture entitled Young Man in Roses, which sounds a bit like how he must have felt when they asked him to curate this show. Finally, we end up in the vast room containing Raphael’s cartoons.
Along the way we learn little about beauty but quite a lot about the contents of Stephen Bayley’s head. Many of his selections confirm a pretty orthodox idea of both beauty and value, but the desire to mark out and hold things up as worthy is the compelling psychosis underpinning the show. In his notes, Bayley provides us with some pretty nebulous background as to what beauty might be. “Beauty is much easier to detect than to define”, he says. “Philosopher’s” have apparently “pondered” it. Well, that’s a help. When people are on thin ice they normally reach for the description ‘timeless’ and Bayley grabs for it here. Generally, it’s probably safe to assume that anything dismissed as superficial isn’t, and anything that claims eternal value is hiding its own insecurities. The concept of beauty here then is, perhaps ultimately, more about a fear of ugliness, or of bad taste, than it is a value in its own right.
“Beauty is a way of editing the world”, writes Stephen Bayley in the introduction to this exhibition at the V+A. Yes, but who would want to edit the world?
I’ve always had a soft spot for Stephen Bayley ever since he suggested that Nicholas Serota had no right being the director of The Tate because he drove a Volvo. It was camp nonsense, but it was funny camp nonsense. This exhibition, however, suggests that Bayley may not have had his tongue anywhere near his cheek when he said it.
Ostensibly, ‘Beauty’ is not really an exhibition at all. It’s actually a trail through the V+A’s permanent collection curated by Bayley. You pick up a catalogue at the front desk and follow the pink arrows around the V+A to objects that he has picked out as representing ideals of beauty. Following this trail to the letter, and ignoring everything else on the way, results in an excitingly random crash course in art history. The most obvious enjoyment of the show, however, is to challenge Bayley’s choice of objects and, thus, get to the nub of his own agenda. Such an approach pricks some holes in his wafer-thin notion of beauty and the usefulness of such a term to start with. For, surely, it is ultimately taste - not beauty - that is being celebrated here and, in particular, Bayley’s own hyper-urbane, ‘darling-one-simply-must-have-the-right-corkscrew’ kind of taste.
So off, and skipping some items, we go. Item 1 is Canova’s Sleeping Nymph which, Bayley informs us, has a ‘cold beauty’ that is ‘intensely erotic’. Which is another way of saying that Steven Bayley himself finds cold beauty intensely erotic. Personally, I find Sarah HYoarding from Girl’s Aloud intensely erotic but I’m not sure it constitutes a manifesto. Moving on, we get to admire a genuinely magnificent Chinese Imperial throne and a Samurai sword but ignore a splendid Fisherman’s Celebration Robe, enjoy a Japanese tea ceremony set, take in Michelangelo’s David, by-pass Metalwork in the Netherlands entirely, stop off to admire Donatello and arrive, oddly, at a photo of Brigitte Bardot by David Bailey. The suggestion that a sword, a tea set and Brigitte Bardot all contain some illusive yet transferable quality is unnerving to say the least.
Moving on, we find, unsurprisingly, that Bayley has little time for Victorian Silverware and thus misses out a truly magnificent eight-armed silver plated fruit bowl dispenser and picks some elegant glassware instead. After this, there are a couple of Arts and Crafts items and we are off into ‘The Modern Era’. Swatch watches, leather trousers and Katherine Hamnett’s ‘Stay Alive in ‘85’ t-shirt don’t make the grade but Olivetti’s typewriter somewhat boringly does. I completely missed Dieter Ram’s Braun radio, so I chose the Inter 6 Transistor Folding Portable Radio – which folds into a ‘space bracelet’ which, you have to admit, is pretty cool – instead.
There are no items picked from Marquetry 1650-1700 and we zip through South Asia without a bye or leave. In the Elizabethan paintings section, Bayley highlights a picture entitled Young Man in Roses, which sounds a bit like how he must have felt when they asked him to curate this show. Finally, we end up in the vast room containing Raphael’s cartoons.
Along the way we learn little about beauty but quite a lot about the contents of Stephen Bayley’s head. Many of his selections confirm a pretty orthodox idea of both beauty and value, but the desire to mark out and hold things up as worthy is the compelling psychosis underpinning the show. In his notes, Bayley provides us with some pretty nebulous background as to what beauty might be. “Beauty is much easier to detect than to define”, he says. “Philosopher’s” have apparently “pondered” it. Well, that’s a help. When people are on thin ice they normally reach for the description ‘timeless’ and Bayley grabs for it here. Generally, it’s probably safe to assume that anything dismissed as superficial isn’t, and anything that claims eternal value is hiding its own insecurities. The concept of beauty here then is, perhaps ultimately, more about a fear of ugliness, or of bad taste, than it is a value in its own right.
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