You could be forgiven for not knowing who Martin Creed is. Indeed, he should not be known at all. Unfortunately, he seems to be the subject of considerable media hype, and he’s currently “cool” in the modern art world (or should I say “scene”, to borrow a fittingly pretentious and fundamentally meaningless word).
The blame for the popularity of Martin Creed can only be placed in part upon Martin Creed. Again, it is the media interest and the pretentious art world (as distinct to the art world in general) that provides the advertising crap. Creed just supplies the artistic crap and goes along for the ride. But it’s all still just crap, nevertheless.
Let me refer you first to a Reuters story on his June 2008 creation, “Work No. 850”. The whole thing is so telling that I could just quote the whole lot and be done with it, really. But let me go through it in bits, for the sake of completeness, and justify my viewpoint.
The Reuters article mentions that Creed’s latest creation is a runner who runs from one end of the gallery to the other every 30 seconds. It would be easy to say that this isn’t art, but this would be wrong: Anything can be considered artistically, and it is to this tedious and tenuous argument that artists (particularly the worse ones, who cannot find their own justifications for their works), often use by default.
Unfortunately for them, it evades the real point: whether a work is worth being considered as a work of art. What is the point of the work? If its significance is not be justifiable, then it is not in a state to be exhibited or pondered over. If a work doesn’t show anything worth considering, such as something profound or new, then there really isn’t any point in anyone wasting time on it, the artist or the viewer. (See also, ‘Pop Music’ blog.)
That a work is popular with the public is not really a good justification: Given enough media coverage and hype (i.e. marketing), people would go and see a Tesco frozen chicken in a cage. Particularly if it were controversial in some way, let’s say if it had tattooed to it a naked picture of a dead man in a wheelchair holding a Nazi flag. But that doesn’t make it art: At best, it makes it meaningless, sick and attention-seeking. Besides, anyone can come up with that sort of tripe. It takes more than this to justify oneself as a good artist.
So, there are four fundamental things that Creed needs to identify in order for his work to be considered a worthy addition to art. The rule-set goes for any other artist and work of art (in any form), as well.
- What does it try to show? Or: What does it represent?
- Does it show something that hasn't been shown before in other works of art? Or is it just a weak imitation of the works of artists that have already been there and done that? In other words, what's the innovation?
- Is his chosen medium the best one to use, in order to express what he wants to express?
- Should anyone care what it is it's trying to say? How does it inspire people? Is it going to add to culture in any meangful and positive way?
Let’s start at the beginning, and then when we’ve reached the end, stop.
1. What does it try to show/represent?
In the Reuters article, Creed gives the following explanation for what his work tries to express.
“Running is the opposite of being still. If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it's an example of aliveness.”
What? Surely that’s excusable logic for your average ten-year-old, but a fully-grown adult?
Here is his thesis in a nut-shell:
- Running fast is the opposite of death. (Funny, I always thought that life was. But what do I know.)
- Those living things which are the most alive move most rapidly.
Where do I start on that bombshell? Firstly, if running fast is an example of aliveness, then that does not in itself mean that it is the opposite of death. Secondly, literally speaking (as indeed Creed is in the above quote), how can anything be any more alive than anything else? Is a baby, who can only crawl slowly, less alive than Paula Radcliffe?
Indeed, this argument holds for any sense of the word: Even if you’re taking the word ‘alive’ to mean something less literal than ‘not dead,’ or even ‘close to death,’ then surely you can say that something that is brighter in colour is more ‘alive’ than something that is darker. Why hasn’t he created a work of art based on colour instead? How does he justify that his interpretation is the best one for his purpose? There are many interpretations of ‘alive,’ and I’d say that Creed’s interpretation was a pretty mediocre one at best.
2. What’s the innovation?
Even if it is innovative to represent aliveness as someone running, the reason why no-one else has done the same thing is probably because they rejected it as a crap idea.
The best justification of innovation I see is of the use of the medium (whatever the medium actually is, in this case. And don’t give me some pretentious claptrap about life or nature itself, being the medium). But it is severely limited. It’s easy to say “a human form in motion has many levels and shows many things that can only be felt and not expressed in words.” From what Creed has said about it, however, this is not what he’s trying to do.
All he is trying to do is to exemplify aliveness artistically. I can go into the street and see or do the same thing. It requires no thought on the part of an artist to represent aliveness in a live person in movement. Similarly, it is of no inspiration to the viewer. In any case, ‘nature itself’ shows us many more things than the human form to demonstrate aliveness, and it does it better. Nature can do it much better than we can, so the whole exercise is pointless – he may as well present his ‘work’ in the form of a directive: “go and have a walk in the park.” Why impersonate downwards? Why buy sterilised milk if you can get Jersey cream for free?
3. Has he chosen the best medium?
His reason for choosing the medium (if you can call it that) of a runner is that he likes running. The trouble is, I like Kung Fu, but I wouldn’t try to explain something by knocking people to the floor just for the sake of it. (Having said that, it would be an interesting justification for giving idiots what they deserve: “I’m a martial artist, this is my way of expressing my opinions, so it’s my prerogative to knock you unconscious.”) In terms of a medium, I wouldn’t say that his explanation was enough to warrant a justification.
4. Is it going to add to culture in any meaningful way?
Here, we can summarise the previous three points. He’s given a ‘full’ account of its purpose in just two sentences in the Reuters article (see quote in point 1, above). Its only innovative quality can be bettered by other means, and even if it is intended to be an innovative expression of nature, it’s a pretty weak one. It isn’t even an interpretation – it’s just taking something straight from life and presenting the thing iteslef as art. The same goes for the chosen medium.
* * *
If this is all the justification he can give, and that’s all there is to it, then what’s the point in trying to pass it off as art? It’s not clever, interesting, insightful, innovative nor inspirational. Thank God for artists like Banksy, who express what they want to express through real desires and with real talent, with none of the pretence and being free of the purely financial motivation to be “contemporary.”
