Art For Art’s Sake

Quality of art is entirely subjective.

Except when it is not.

Daily I rail against the cultural desertification of art in general, and contemporary design in particular. I detest the blanding out of every interior decor or fashion choice to greige merging into off white “with just a pop of colour” (i.e. one faded print or cushion that has a vague pastel or two in it).

Whatever happened to the bold psychedelic riot of the 60s/90s/2010s? Where is the adventurous spirit inherent in art nouveau and art deco or the bedlam of cubism or surrealism of Dali?

Art has been reduced to an investment and the ‘safe choice’ always seems to get a financial return. Design even more so.

Unfortunately, this then results in the lowest common denominator of non-offensive, bland, repetitive meh.

Screw boring. Forget house flipping. No more safe choices.

Go out on limb and take a chance. Live a little. Hell, live a lot.

Mirka Mora was always smiling.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera were never bored by reduction to the commonplace. They never took the weightless option.

Kip Williams didn’t take the easy path with his staging of the cine-theatre trilogy, but theatre goers are far richer for his willingness to be bold and take risks.

From Bauhaus to my house, great architecture takes both vision and resolute steadfastness. There are few regrets for me in whittling an ancient tree into the window seats I now lounge in.

Le Corbusier was safe with the palette but radical in terms of addressing his contemporary zeitgeist.

The work of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid will remain exciting for centuries. Rinse and repeat spec homes will fade and fall over long before then. Fashion is fleeting; style is eternal.

I have great respect and admiration for artists who can both remain true to pushing artistic boundaries while simultaneously making a fiscal success of it (especially while they are still alive). Props to Lady Gaga, Banksy, Tracey Emin, and all-time favourites Frank Zappa and Hunter S. Thompson. They compromised little and still made a living from Art. Other contemporary boundary pushers I’m watching in this space include Celeste Mountjoy (aka Filthy Ratbag), Minna Leunig, Louis Cole, Sam Wilkes, Rai Thistlethwayte, Vincent Namatjira, Brooke Didonato, and Tamara Dean.

Just last week, I attended another brilliant performance by Tenzin Choegyal at a local hall. Fresh from working with luminaries like Phillip Glass and Laurie Anderson on the biggest of world stages, he is just at home doing little regional gigs for a handful of people. He’s even cooler than Iggy Pop and his voice transports me to another plane.

David Walsh and Kira Kerschelle are likely rarely bored. On face value, their artistic choices are often less bankable than wankable, but they continually seem to make a buck anyway. I had the pleasure of working in their Melbourne apartment nearly 20 years ago and it was an inspiring mayhem of colour and form. Located in a Nonda Katsilidis minor masterpiece – the Republic Tower building overlooking Vic Markets – both the building and apartment were far more interesting and exciting than 200 identikit soulless McMansions or gauche gilded millionaire fakeries.

The singular approach to pure art can sometimes result in the artist becoming increasingly selfish. But there is no excuse for being an arsehole just to hang your work in the Louvre. Toulouse Lautrec was a real shit by all accounts but I bet he got more (meaningful) coupling and uncoupling than Gwyneth of the Goop.

History is evermore unkind to the unkind. Seeya Rolf. Should have tied your tendencies down, sport.

Give me a world where Mr Bungle gets more traction than Ed Sheeran. Where Fugazi outplays Tay Tay. Where flash and crash are more important than cold hard cash.

When I first started lighting stages, I went over the top with every scene, using every available colour and five million cues per second. The acts that I was illuminating reflected and needed that zest. Later, as safer, more middle of the road artistes became my paymaster, my stage light evolved to more refined but ultimately blander palettes and cue choices. Variants of a hue rather than clashes of primaries; soft easy fades over crash-n-bash solo buttons; I’d become as safe and boring as the talent onstage. I better understood the art of stagecraft but was less in touch with the art inherent in illumination.

Subtlety (safety) had overtaken brashness for me. This was part commercial and part artistic choice. By design, I let cleverness eclipse immediate and more visceral impact. In retrospect, this made sense, as I transitioned to corporate theatre not long after and these decisions became clear in that context. They also allowed me to put down a deposit on some dirt and nearly enough coin to build a house. Which we have decorated with colour.

The desire to go all-out has been tempered by age, honed down by past rejections and only surfaces when I am truly enraged by a topic that makes my blood boil or emboldened via a carefree flow state.

Ego boosts from admirers never hurt either.

My writing and photography now oscillate between these extremes. The former is often commercially constrained (though this column gives some degree of license towards exercising the exciting.) The latter has no such boundaries and I feel comfortable breaking rules and exploring the margins with my pictographs. It matters not if they never turn a dollar. It does matter if they inspire me and even more so if they inspire others.

Salutations to artists able to combine pure heartfelt ART with filling of the fridge and fancy accoutrements. You are rare.