what is art? — Please Do Not Touch

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The Distance from Art - Please Do Not Touch (Part I)

Some of the conditions about art today strengthen the pedestal of art, which indirectly prompts alienation from art, and isolation of art.  O’Doherty points out that most people still have a sense of hostility towards the (dealer) gallery:

‘Aesthetics are turned into a kind of social elitism - the gallery space is exclusive. Isolated in plots of space, what is on display looks a bit like valuable scarce goods, jewellery, or silver: aesthetics are turned into commerce - the gallery space is expensive. What it contains is, without initiation, well-nigh incomprehensible - art is difficult. Exclusive audience, rare objects difficult to comprehend - here we have a social, financial, and intellectual snobbery which models (and at its worst parodies) our system of limited production, our modes of assigning value, our social habits at large. Never was a space, designed to accommodate the prejudices and enhance the self-image of the upper middle classes, so efficiently codified.’

However, neither was art ’sympathetic’ to its audience:

‘Hostility to the audience is one of the key coordinates of modernism, and artists may be classified according to its wit, style, and depth.’

Apart from being warned to be quiet when viewing art, the viewer is also cautioned against touching art with signs in varying sizes saying ‘Please Do Not Touch’. Therefore a distance is kept between art and the spectator, no-one wants to be punished for accidents. Fragility of art veils itself.

The viewer, especially children, walks from one painting to another with their hands behind their back, letting out only occasional exclamatory whispers. The ‘exclusiveness, expensiveness and difficultness of art’ that envelope art are however core elements that construct the mystique of art; they help make art special.

It has become a difficult dilemma: how close to art should one stand?  Indeed it is a difficult decision to make when confronting art, and being so conscious of it, the contemporary viewer enters into a phenomenon were the body is left to face the art, and the mind leaves the body to take a more comfortable and safer position at a distance. Thereby the viewer or the spectator become the ’surrogate’ for an experience of art.

The Absence of Self - Please Do Not Touch (Part II)

The penetrative observation by O’Doherty of the viewer’s fetish is yet another illustration of the kind of alienation that dominates contemporary attitude towards an experience of art:

‘It often feels as if we can no longer experience anything if we don’t first alienate it. In fact, alienation may now be a necessary preface to experience. … This mode of handling experience - especially art experience - is inescapably modern.’

The absence of the self is a play of the ego. When an individual’s presence in an environment is constrained, their psychological state is ‘not at home’. The idea of ridicule and punishment as a result of a wrong-doing propels most people to ‘behave’ themselves, and hide their stupidity and ignorance.

The mystique of art, characterised by its exclusiveness, expensiveness and difficultness, restrains some people from opening up themselves to be affected by art.  Instead, they withdraw away from such an experience by creating surrogates to ‘protect’ their inner vulnerable self, in fear of not being able to ‘understand’ art even if they tried.  Ultimately it is the fear of the uncanny.   The mystique of art make art uncanny because the uncanny ‘veils reality, and also because it tricks’ as Anthony Vidler writes in “The Architectural Uncanny: essays in the modern unhomely”.

Faced with the uncanny, afraid of falling into its traps, withdrawing from it is easier than confronting it. The endeavour to create a distance from art is reflected in how art is displayed. Artworks are shielded from others with space, plenty of space is installed around each piece, to avoid distraction and interaction in order to maintain sanity to brood over the confrontation with art. Such is an contemporary experience of art, guarding every step towards the uncanny, looking forward to taming its elusiveness with clarity of space.

Yet it seems like a struggle with diminishing intensity. Is this the only way to approach the uncanny of art?

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