I decided to go shopping yesterday.
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It probably wasn’t the best idea, Covent Garden on the bussiest Saturday of the year. Still, I made it to the end. Before I had even begun the ordeal, I walked from Waterloo Station, accross the footbridge to Charing Cross Station. On the way there is an outdoor art installation :
This stuff is pretty po-mo, but its also quite nice. I like walking through london and seeing things like this; art that doesn’t reach out and grab you, but makes you wonder if it is actually art. Is this a local youth group who’ve put some lights into a bin? No, its David Batchelor, who says:
“I like to create temporary projects in public spaces, inserting something that will only be there for a few days or weeks, but will alter the experience of the space during that time.”
So thats quite similar to graffiti then. It is a temporary project in a public space, that alters the experience of people who experience the art. The remaining differences are due to the social status of the type of art that is being expresesed. Everything costs something. A graffiti artist must pay for their spray cans as David Batchelor must pay his mortgage. The difference is that people like Batchelor’s pay-cheque comes from a foundation or similar publically funded body, a factor which gives them credibility. Their work becomes art because the police cannot remove it, the council can’t get it painted over and because people’s complaints about it are labelled “old fashioned”/”not in touch with modern culture”. Conversely, the graffiti artist’s work is washed away with increasingly swift action, becuase it is not officially sanctioned.
Should art be reliant on state funding? Would we have a more balanced representation of the society we live in if art was subject to the same economic constraints that most of us live our lives by?
I think its quit nice – I probably wouldn’t have bothered talking photos if I had thought differently. Still, I’d like to know how much the installation cost the public purse so that I can make a balanced judgement.
Those time wasting agitators at