FEATURES Mark Harris on avant-garde style in .recent British art and advertising As a discourse exploited to the point of incoherence the theory of Mark Wallinger Royal Ascot the avant garde refuses to dissipate. Its currency as a marketing 1994 device still evident, the notion of avant-garde practice rattles around critical writing on the new British art, still assuming a collision of political and aesthetic radicality, even sustaining an anachronistic belief in shock and offensiveness, not just as feasible achievements (in a society that instantly embraces such qualities) but even as strategies potent enough to influence social change. That the avant garde cannot, even early this century, revolutionary approach to literary theory. Even be simplistically applied as a categorisation was where an avant garde is cautiously identified as hav­ shown by the Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky who ing made an effective challenge through art, as with from 1917 fought for the Bolsheviks as he wrote Theory Peter Burger's account of Dadaist performance, its of Prose which while not recognising a sublimation radicality is interpreted as the (failed) attempt, of art into political life nevertheless advocated a through unmitigated iconoclasm, to dissolve the 2.96 I ART MONTHLY I 193 3 Sam Taylor-Wood Brontosaurus 1995 (video still) institution of art into life 1 It is a diluted and simpli­ important'. Frieze (November- December 1995). fied version of this theory that resurfaces in current Neville Wakefield: ' [British artists ] have adopted an enthusiasm for British art invo lving apparent collu­ aggressive guerrilla approach to both art-making and sion by so me of the artists themselves . Dinos and its display, and their 'fuck it', do- it-yourself attitude Jake Chapman, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Chris gives much of their art its bite.' (catalogue for Bril­ Ofili and others depend on a persistent tolerance of liant!). Robe rta Smith: 'the British contingent this trope for their work to gain meaning. As an embraces with particular enthusiasm the belief that atavistic avant-gardism it can be understood as a art ... has a respo nsibili ty to be dist urb ing and stylistic device , a vestigial offensiveness that desig­ adversarial ... ', (New York Times, 23/11/95) nates participation in a broader submission to abra­ This photograph, supplied by Mat Co lli shaw, is sive imagery and language , especially in current falsely used by the Walker to radicalise the exhibition. advertising where, in order to promote commodities, That such an established institution fee ls comfortable these devices are developed most effectively.2 playing at avant-gardism, at the expense of a more It is no irony then that one of the most revealing complex appraisal of these artists, is a sign of how examples of this phenomenon is an advertisement degraded the term has become. The very institutions for Brilliant! at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, to be challenged or at least 'reframed' (to use Hal where an aerial photo of the aftermath of a 1992 IRA Foster's term of what remains for an avant-garde bomb in London has the names of the exhibiting ro le3), are instead allowed to perpetuate such tropes artists, randomly superimposed as if claiming for in this mythologising of contemporary art. Little dif­ their own, in the sense even as collaborators, the ferent in its oversimplification of affect is the docu­ infrastructure's devastation. Beyond the obvious mentation accompanying the Tate's Turner Pri ze. 4 resonance this image would have for Americans still Without scrutinising the history that legitimates these pondering the bombing in Otlahoma City, it reveals claims, both exaggerate the ass umption by some of an institutionalised aestheticisation of violence, as if these artists that new form, or in some instances sim­ such explosions could be interpreted not simply as ply new attitude, engenders rad ical content. the enviro nment we now have to put up with , but An alternative to avant-garde theory that nonethe­ rather as avant-garde interventions on a scale less retains the sense of resistance may be Mikhail desired by, but eluding, these artists. If this associa­ Bakhtin's evaluation of the carnivaL His identification tion seems far-fetch ed it's worth weighing some of of an irrepressible opposition to hierarchical institu­ the language used to describe the work in that par­ tions originating in medieval celebration, in laughter, ticular exhibition. Richard Flood: ' ... that unholy ribaldry, blasphemy and travesty, is easily enough interest [from the British press and public] allows traced in this country through its literature , music the artists to operate with a very well-defined pro­ hall, television, and comedy to some of these artists. gramme of subversion. They can actually make work Bakhtin's claim that the anti-authoritarianism implic­ that, within the culture, is quite anarchic and that's it in carnival excess had a disrupting centrifugal 4 193 I ART MONTHLY I 2 .96 effect on institutional discourse has parallels with the 'unauthorised' vo ice resists authority on several Ben Nott and some of the work here. In terms of Bakhtin's cate­ levels, granting a momentary outlet for the speech­ PauiBennell gories the abusive language of the market place is le ss (while indicating how speech is relentlessly Advertisement for Kadu evoked by Sarah Lucas's invective, street cries by oppressed institutionally) and opposing designations Sportswear 1993 Michael Landy and by Gillian Wearing's placards, the of how art should be made. celebration of bodily degradation by Damien Hirst's We are frequently reminded that this art, this installations, laughter at the community's institutions avant garde, is 'British', though since most of the and leaders by Mark Wallinger's videos, while the work under scrutiny is London-based this means less sideshow aspect to much of the work, in terms of geographically than culturally. Such an intense cul­ theme and installation, places emphasis on provoca­ tural relativism has obvious marketing value, and yet tive entertainment rather than on setting out condi­ the declared characteristics - offensiveness, irony, tions for contemplation or praxis. humour, paradox, sexual frankness - identified as With reference to Bakhtin's 'heteroglossia', where British, are hardly unique to this country. Maurizio innumerable competing discourses jostle for efficacy Cattelan, Karen Finley, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff to form the language used by any society, it is possi­ Koons, Annie Sprinkle and The Wooster Group use ble to assess the effectiveness of this art by compar­ similar devices. As ide from the retrogressive chau­ ing the extent to which it counters dominant vinism of this phenomenon (how long do you have to centripetal forms of speech in which we all partici­ be living here to qualify and do you count if you live pate by default. Seen from this point of view Sam abroad?) what might be most British about the traits Taylor-Wood's Brontosaurus sets the naked male it identifies is the one it reveals about itself. By com­ dancer against a Samuel Barber so undtrack as mending national idiosyncrasy it rewards the same apparent incompatibles, overlaid as a representation provincialism that insulated other generations of of emotional limit - the carnival dance resisting British artists from exposu re to innovative work from within - while appearing at times to take its from abroad. cue from the authoritative determination of the clas­ As the borders of the nation have grown perme­ sical music. Characterising some of the most effec­ able there appears an increasing need for this cul­ tive work, especially where there is an intentional ture to recognise value in an anachronistic category excess of content as with Gillian Wearing's 'docu­ - Britishness - and the artists themselves offer no mentaries', the 'I' of the artist as author changes to lucid critique of this use to which they are being put. an 'I' located in the enunciations of other people, The implication that this celebrated nationalism people usually from outside the artworld. This use of might be a retreat from a trans-national style, into 2.96 I ART MONTHLY I 193 5 FEATURES Can it be that the same institutions defining this across America, a period of mourning her mother's death). Confining meaning to the utterable or legible avant-gardism are overlooking examples of a more has the virtue of it needing no translation as it crosses profound collision of aesthetic and political mediating structure s, from artwork , to gallery, to newspaper, to television , to collector, to museum. Its radicality or has that possibility just been iro ned significance, fi xed at the start as essence , remains fi at by 16 years of conservative rul e? intact along the journey, reiterated by each agency promoting and in turn deriving purpose from the work. There is no room for difference, for dispu te, what is locally potent, is hardly tenable given this because there is nothing other than what was stated participation in the conventio ns of avant-gardism, as the authentic subject at the beginning. The now clearly the orthodoxy of art institutions. Along authenticity of the artist's body probed by cameras is with certain other characteristics this aspect reveals declarative at outset and cannot easily be diluted or a focus common to much international contempo­ challenged in its subsequent passage into co mmen­ rary art suggesting a continuing impo ssibility for tary. What it says ab out itself it is. As its own commod­ regionalism and the subsequent irrelevance of this ity the art sells itself with the clarity of advertising, acclamation of Britishness. and as noted earlier, shares some of the provocational One of these characteristics is the conceptual methods sanctioned by the trade. Th e irony of John emphasis shared with much recent American wo rk.