We have a new neighbour: the White Cube gallery on Bermondsey Street. It's a sort of out of town superstore version of the other White Cubes dotted around London. Except that it's not out of town; it's in Zone 1, SE1, Bermondsey Street, aka the "new Notting Hill". Etc.
In Sao Paulo I laughed through the tears at the amateurishness of their art museums. Here, I am in equal measure impressed and depressed by the new addition to our inner city "village".
Today, on my third visit, I got talking to one of the black-clad characters who float around the place, as if to offer help and guidance but really to keep our cashless hands, and cameras, off the artwork / copyright.
He was my kind of person: honest, jaded, and chatty. "There are 40 of us," he confided, "and although we consider ourselves well-paid, our employers only need to sell one Tracey Emin piece to fund all our salaries for an entire year !" I told him it was confusing trying to work out whether this converted warehouse was meant to be a museum like Tate Modern or a shop aimed at very wealthy buyers.
Everything on show is for sale - not that they'd be so indiscreet as to put a price anywhere in view. The current main exhibit is a number of works by Anselm Kiefer, a German artist who though not Jewish himself references the Holocaust and Jewish mysticism.
At the austere reception I asked for a price list and was told I could see a sales person or phone them later. There are no price lists, of course.
As my friendly and diminutive interlocutor confirmed, we Joseph and Joanna Public are an integral part of the show: the gallery lets us in for free because our approbation - and numbers, currently averaging 600 visitors a day - are key to inflating and indeed maintaining the lofty status of the artist-cum-brand for sale.
The gallery owner is one Jay Jopling, former boyfriend of Lily Allen and co-founder of Brit Art, alongside Damien Hirst and Charles Saatchi. They succeeded in speeding up the process by which an object becomes a piece of art and then a very valuable piece of art.
Like other modern processes, such as the "artificial" techniques introduced by the Californian wine industry, a key ingredient of Jopling and co.'s alchemy is publicity. Let the masses feel included so that their psychological investment in the "art' increases its worth to the privileged few. The people who actually buy the stuff are, like everyone else, just sheep looking for a shepherd.
During the twentieth century art was finally transmogrified from a quasi-religious pursuit into a fully-fledged alternative currency. And as fiat currencies lost their luster - a bottomless pit of devalued bank notes in recent times - art became an even more legitimate store of wealth, an asset class. Cue Oscar Wilde's famous witticism about a cynic knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So here we have the art gallery as megastore, merchandise masquerading as museum, with many thousands of square feet in which to display multi-million pound pieces. There are even more hidden square feet - used for storage and as "private viewing rooms" for the high-rollers. Very kabbalistic that the secret gallery is in fact the real gallery.
But I can't end this post looking quite so disdainful of the marketing industry that is modern art. After all, we locals now have another place to go, somewhere to ogle the works of "famous" artists, and all for free. Bermondsey Street is now an achingly trendy place, having been reinvented and revitalised by the process of "gentrification" that began roughly when I moved here in 1997.
These days, as well as gallery visitors, it's buzzing with yuppies, trendies, yummy mummies and even tourists. Once the nearby Shard is completed, this demographic shift will no doubt intensify. The quirky shops and boutiques are jam-packed with life's more expensive non-essential items. Still, it's alive rather than dead, as it used to be - or at least as it seemed to the uninitiated. This formerly industrial inner-city area, dominated by warehouses, offices and council flats, was a very different place 15 years ago.
Now, like the materials for sale in the White Cube, it has been re-created. Artifice or authenticity ? A fake or the real thing ? Base metal or gold ? And if it is all one grand illusion - a big fat price tag slapped on a "meaningless" concept - how much is it objectively worth ? Cue the cliche answer: whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.
True enough. But you can't quite shake the feeling that neither the glittering white gallery nor those of us in its environs are standing on solid ground.
Update: currencies collide.
In Sao Paulo I laughed through the tears at the amateurishness of their art museums. Here, I am in equal measure impressed and depressed by the new addition to our inner city "village".
Today, on my third visit, I got talking to one of the black-clad characters who float around the place, as if to offer help and guidance but really to keep our cashless hands, and cameras, off the artwork / copyright.
He was my kind of person: honest, jaded, and chatty. "There are 40 of us," he confided, "and although we consider ourselves well-paid, our employers only need to sell one Tracey Emin piece to fund all our salaries for an entire year !" I told him it was confusing trying to work out whether this converted warehouse was meant to be a museum like Tate Modern or a shop aimed at very wealthy buyers.
Everything on show is for sale - not that they'd be so indiscreet as to put a price anywhere in view. The current main exhibit is a number of works by Anselm Kiefer, a German artist who though not Jewish himself references the Holocaust and Jewish mysticism.
At the austere reception I asked for a price list and was told I could see a sales person or phone them later. There are no price lists, of course.
As my friendly and diminutive interlocutor confirmed, we Joseph and Joanna Public are an integral part of the show: the gallery lets us in for free because our approbation - and numbers, currently averaging 600 visitors a day - are key to inflating and indeed maintaining the lofty status of the artist-cum-brand for sale.
The gallery owner is one Jay Jopling, former boyfriend of Lily Allen and co-founder of Brit Art, alongside Damien Hirst and Charles Saatchi. They succeeded in speeding up the process by which an object becomes a piece of art and then a very valuable piece of art.
Like other modern processes, such as the "artificial" techniques introduced by the Californian wine industry, a key ingredient of Jopling and co.'s alchemy is publicity. Let the masses feel included so that their psychological investment in the "art' increases its worth to the privileged few. The people who actually buy the stuff are, like everyone else, just sheep looking for a shepherd.
During the twentieth century art was finally transmogrified from a quasi-religious pursuit into a fully-fledged alternative currency. And as fiat currencies lost their luster - a bottomless pit of devalued bank notes in recent times - art became an even more legitimate store of wealth, an asset class. Cue Oscar Wilde's famous witticism about a cynic knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
So here we have the art gallery as megastore, merchandise masquerading as museum, with many thousands of square feet in which to display multi-million pound pieces. There are even more hidden square feet - used for storage and as "private viewing rooms" for the high-rollers. Very kabbalistic that the secret gallery is in fact the real gallery.
But I can't end this post looking quite so disdainful of the marketing industry that is modern art. After all, we locals now have another place to go, somewhere to ogle the works of "famous" artists, and all for free. Bermondsey Street is now an achingly trendy place, having been reinvented and revitalised by the process of "gentrification" that began roughly when I moved here in 1997.
These days, as well as gallery visitors, it's buzzing with yuppies, trendies, yummy mummies and even tourists. Once the nearby Shard is completed, this demographic shift will no doubt intensify. The quirky shops and boutiques are jam-packed with life's more expensive non-essential items. Still, it's alive rather than dead, as it used to be - or at least as it seemed to the uninitiated. This formerly industrial inner-city area, dominated by warehouses, offices and council flats, was a very different place 15 years ago.
Now, like the materials for sale in the White Cube, it has been re-created. Artifice or authenticity ? A fake or the real thing ? Base metal or gold ? And if it is all one grand illusion - a big fat price tag slapped on a "meaningless" concept - how much is it objectively worth ? Cue the cliche answer: whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.
True enough. But you can't quite shake the feeling that neither the glittering white gallery nor those of us in its environs are standing on solid ground.
Update: currencies collide.
At least WC is a good indoor place to take Sam to walk when is very windy :-))
ReplyDeleteGod bless pragmatism !!
DeleteIf its increasing the local house prices you can hardly complain!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe my iPhone finally let me leave a comment! (Jon)
ReplyDeleteNice one Jon, and fingers crossed this blog will keep accepting comment posts !
ReplyDelete