The boyfriend is not the biggest fan of art. He thinks a lot of it is a waste of time, especially the pieces that he thinks he could do himself (ie. a white canvas with a blue line, etc). And at times I'm inclined to agree (although as I point out to him, he might be able to do it, but he wouldn't have thought of it in the first place).
Anyway. Off we toddled to Pop Life. It was £12.50 to get in. Fine. Not extortionate. And because it was mid-week, it was fairly quiet.
As an exhibition it is ok. The first half I found a little long. And although the exhibition features a lot of artists, there are almost too many, and you end up feeling that you haven't really got to grips with any of them.
Two things struck me as we went round.
1. The sex. Now, you are warned that some of the pieces are of an extremely sexual nature, but even so, seeing an 8ft tall picture of an ejaculating penis, or the larger than life sculpture of the artist Jeff Koons in extremely explicit sexual positions with his porn star wife was really a little overwhelming.
2. The idea of art, the artist, and the consumer.
There was one piece by Andrea Fraser. To create the piece she had spoken to a gallery, and they had found her a customer that wanted to purchase the piece she was about to create. But the piece would be created with this man. She filmed the two of the them having sex. And it was this film that was on display.
On paper this sounds a little like prostitution. But I think the idea was that in the moment of creating art, you inevitably sell a part of your being. Yes, it is a form of prostitution, but there is no way that you can create art without investing part of both your physical and emotional self. And I guess what she was trying to say was that your work is then sold to a stranger, and a stragner that will then own this incredibly personal part of you. In this film, she just made this parallel in the most basic way possible - using the literal image of sex.
It seemed that all the ideas demonstrated by the artists were that of how life and art intertwine. And how what you as the artisit see, is then recreated, along with your own emotional investment into said image, purely for the superficial enjoyment of others. Hence the prolific use of pornography, or elements of pornography throughout the exhibition.
Purely by chance, shortly after going I started to read Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". This too totally focuses on the idea of art and life, and how the two are inextricably linked (albeit in a Gothic and more fantastical way). And the only conclusion that I've really come to, even if it is a little crude, is that all artists must pimp themselves out to the faceless public, because all of us (be it painters, sculptors, draftsmen, poets, authors, even bloggers) have to invest our own personal beliefs, emotions and intimacies, and lay them all naked before the eyes of strangers.
On a lighter note, I think my favourite piece was the silver steel bunny.
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