CHARLES WILLIAMS’ MUSINGS

My regular reader may remember my anecdote about the Chinese artist in Nottingham Contemporary, filling a decommissioned American spyplane with stuffed bats. I had popped into the gallery only to be informed that they were shut while the new exhibition was installed. I could see someone crouched by the side of an enormous aeroplane in the big gallery space, taking small brown things out of a box. The receptionist told me, with a special little smirk, what was going on.

I have seen this smirk many times. It means ‘isn’t that extraordinary?’ and it is there because the expected reaction is ‘what on earth would anyone want to do that for?’ And quite right; the question does occur. To be honest, I find it a little offensive, because there is the implication that the smirker knows why the thing is happening and you don’t. It’s a proprietorial smirk, the smirk of someone who has special knowledge. ‘What on earth would anyone want to do that for?’ Well, there was a complex web of reasons for that piece, but the one thing that they will never say is that it’s pointless, empty, ritualised behaviour, and that once you have thought the image (in this case the plane, the bats) you really don’t need to experience it. It’s a surreal conjunction of images. Like a poem. You don’t need a film of a skylark to understand the Hopkins poem.

But the artist ‘has’ to do it, because otherwise, how are you going to have a private view, a catalogue printed, employ receptionists, explainers, curators or whatever you want to call them? How do you justify the Arts Council grant? The artist ‘has’ to do it because he or she is amazing, and he or she is incredible. These are the two key terms in art appreciation today. Antony Gormley is amazing and incredible. As is Banksy. As is Tracey Emin. As is anyone who is exhibiting in the nearest starchitect-designed art gallery to you.