Am I An Oak Tree Yet?

In another shameless act of heat-induced idleness, I'm now reposting a piece from 2015, in which I consider the possibility of identifying as an oak tree in the future. Here it is, as usual lightly edited and revised:

Oak Trees

An oak tree

In a previous post (Over My Head) I was talking about the importance of allusion and making "inter-textual" references in writing and culture-talk, and how this is becoming more difficult in a world where talking across cultures, rather than simply within them, has become the norm; a world where my cultural bedrock ("A little dab'll do ya!" – Brylcreem! ) is your baffled recourse to Google. Without a reliable stock of similes and metaphors drawn from everyday life and shared experience – sporting, culinary or whatever – we're forced either to fall back on a plain-vanilla language – sorry! I mean "a bland, lowest-common-denominator language" – or to adopt the high-flown language of philosophy, precise in its meaning but incomprehensible to the uninitiated.

Weirdly, it seems that the art-speak of the visual arts has taken that second, philosophical route, but mostly without having done the necessary preliminary homework. Artists have never been famous for their studiousness, after all. Neither were they notoriously chatty about their processes and intentions in the past, often preferring to remain silent, or to mutter a few inarticulate sentences about liking to play with paint an' that, and to leave all that interpretation palaver to the critics. In comparison, today's artists can be quite the pocket philosopher, always ready with a verbose account of what they've been up to and, crucially, why.

In particular, in contemporary art-speak the idea of "reference" – whether to art history, traditions of discourse, politics, or even science – has floated free, detached by the liberal application of that universal solvent, Kwik Po-Mo™ (available in all good art schools). As an artist, it seems you can pretty much choose (or declare) what your reference points are, and what they signify, like a programmer declaring variables. I don't think this is what is meant by a "floating chain of signifiers", but what do I know? You hardly ever read an artist's descriptive statement of their "practice", now, without being told quite explicitly how this or that gesture, mark, or aesthetic choice "references" this or that important issue, from complex philosophical debates and cutting-edge scientific theories to controversial matters of race, gender, and politics. Why? Because I say so! How? In the way I say! Read the bloody manual statement!

This is not just the case in conceptual art, although it's clearly conceptual art that has set this tendency going. If you've never done so, it's worth considering Michael Craig-Martin's influential work, An Oak Tree, from 1973. Go on, have a read. I'll still be here (or ... will I?).

All done? Intriguing, no? Also, infuriating. As Arte Johnson's character used to say in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, "Ve-e-ry interesting ...  But also stoopid!" I'm not sure why and when artists decided their role was primarily to be enactors of head-hurting philosophical conundrums, but it's never been a good look. Philosophers generally make pretty terrible paintings, too. You can't blame such brilliantly multi-talented people for wanting to escape from their boxes, I suppose, but the day a conceptual plumber turns up at my house to fix a dripping tap carrying nothing but a six-pack of beer – no, really, these are my tools – is the day I decide I am, after all, an oak tree.

May I ask you for a reference?

It's as if the decay of an understood, shared framework of reference has created an anxiety about being misunderstood – I'm just a soul whose intentions are good! – which in turn has created a control-freakish insistence on being understood in the right way; that is, my way. Not so much Derrida as Lewis Carroll, then:

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
Through the Looking-Glass

Hmm, I'd forgotten about that reference to hegemony slipped in at the end there. Nice one, Humpty.

In the end, so much contemporary art seems to aspire to do little more than illustrate the artist's statement, to colour in an already completed verbal outline. That detailed declaration of intent, after all, is so often the very thing that might win you a commission in the first place. In a world of competitive tendering, the safest strategy is "do what you document; document what you do", which will be a familiar nostrum to anyone who has had to grapple with the demands of modern corporate managerialism – health and safety statements, job descriptions, best-practice manuals, and all. Though it does seem a long way from art, somehow. By their statements shall ye know them. [1]

What is also remarkable, however, is the parallel process by which artists have come to regard all fields of human endeavour as raw material badly in need of re-interpretation. There can hardly be a museum, learned society, or scientific establishment that has not hosted an "artist in residence" in recent times. I suppose it's not impossible that a potter or a sculptor might have a useful contribution to make in biological taxonomy or advanced physics, though it must always be a bit of a long shot. The claimed symbiotic, synergetic benefits of such arrangements always seem more than a little one way, unless of course the lab was simply looking for something to brighten up the reception area.

Not so long ago, someone (it's not clear who) said that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture"; the absurdity of the comparison was, presumably, taken to be self-evident. Well, not any more. Hmm, "dancing about architecture"... You're already half-way to a decent submission for, let's say, artist-in-residence at RIBA. The rest, obviously, will depend entirely on the quality of the accompanying statement, and whether it ticks all the right boxes. Please pay particular attention to the boxes marked "community involvement", "inclusivity", and "value for money". That you can dance a bit (or paint, or photograph, or write, or whatever other arty thing it is that you do), well, we can take that bit for granted, can't we? [2]

If you say so...

1. A good example of an allusion that may go unrecognised, today, even in the "Christian heritage" world. It refers to Matthew 7:15-20, part of the Sermon on the Mount. You know, in the New Testament? In the Bible? Look it up! You don't have one? Jesus...

2. Actually, no, it seems we can't, at least where painting is concerned. The recent outbreak of fashionable cack-handedness with a brush has successfully blurred the distinction between those who can and those who really can't paint, at least as traditionally conceived. I suppose it does take away one of those pesky elitist barriers to a career in art... Probably not something you'd want to try in the sciences or even architecture, though? Although, on second thoughts, why should my innumeracy prevent me from having a prominent career in theoretical physics if that's what I want to do? It's naked numerism!