Art and Celebrity: the Quest for Ultravisibilty
CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING Icelandic composer-performer Björk’s recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York raises a number of questions about the role of major art institutions in the 21st Century. These questions go far beyond automatic predictably fusty indications of reactionary consternation over a mere ‘pop star’ showing in the hallowed halls of a ‘proper’ art museum. What they indicate instead is a broader crisis of identity for contemporary art institutions today. Moreover they hint at a consequent crisis concerning what art is, or can do, in a contemporary cultural climate beset by neoliberal demands for endless money making spectacle. These days, public institutions of all kinds - cultural, educational, medical, correctional - are increasingly beholden to pressures that demand they not only break even, but generate profits as well. Not surprisingly, the museum becomes more and more a site for celebrity-focused fantasy. Indeed, while the imagist import of celebrity culture is a well recognised phenomenon, the current global spectralisation of celebrities famous only for their celebrity is a much more recent development. Such celebrities trade on the cultivation and media dissemination of affective images and lifestyles whose global desirability appears to transcend gender, class, race and geographical specificities. It is their openness to interpretation plus their ultimate unattainability that propels desire for these figures of fame and the images they purvey. This would also explain the deliberate courting of celebrity performed by major art institutions like MoMA (1). Of course, MoMA is no stranger to its international reputation as a coveted tourist destination; the mere pull Van Gogh’s Starry Night exerts over the iphone would alone be enough to testify to this fact. The growing symbiosis between art institutions and celebrity is extremely telling. Icons of popular culture become ‘artists’ at the same rate that certain artists and curators become ‘stars’. Ultimately though it seems that institutions need the ultravisibility bequeathed by stars more than celebrities need the support of feted art institutions.
Critical reception of Bjork’s MoMA show was almost universally negative. Many well-known critics such as Jerry Saltz at the New Yorker precluded their essentially damning appraisals by stating that they admired Björk and what she had done for contemporary music (2). They just hated the exhibition. Indeed, the consistency of positive disclaimers among critics regarding Björk’s compositional and performance prowess, indicate the very real contribution Björk has made to contemporary music. In fact it would be difficult to plausibly argue against the experimental, self-testing, artful, ‘serious’ nature of Björk’s overall oeuvre. In a previous era, ‘pop’ musicians were more beholden to the expectations of the identifiable subcultures and markets to which their music was pitched, incidentally and strategically. In contrast, in an era of digital sampling and practically instantaneous global collaboration that readily allows the interpolation of musical genres as well as technologies, varieties of experimentation have become much more accessible to contemporary practitioners. Whether or not they choose to embrace them is another question. A musician like Björk has obviously embraced such possibilities and has pushed technical and vocal experimentation while intermixing classical, folk and electronic genres in a truly singular way. Not only this, she has employed the talents of an array of some the most influential and ambitious audio-visual producers and performers. In lieu of her dedication to musical experimentation is her considerable parallel concern for the imagist dimension of her practice, her comparable investment in visual experimentation and metamorphic modes of self-presentation. Some of media aspects of this self-presentation have been cute or overtly ‘kooky’ as perhaps befits a globe-trotting maverick, while other aspects have deployed a serious and nuanced concern for abrupt collagist effects. Björk’s videos, collaborating with artists like Chris Cunningham (3) have been rightly celebrated; here are music videos that push the envelope of narrative and cinematic possibility. In the case of popular musicians like Björk, and certain others with a similarly tenacious vision, separating simple populism from serious audio-visual achievement becomes almost a moot point. The question about whether or not Björk’s music is serious ‘art’ and therefore high-culture or low-cultural popular entertainment means little. The hybridity, although a hackneyed term, of an artist like Björk’s work, challenges and complexifies the traditional high-low nexus. The question then remains, why was MoMA’s Björk exhibition deemed so universally terrible?
By all accounts, the presentation of the musician’s output at MoMA imagined it as a combination of entertainment sideshow and marketing exercise. Not that Björk’s career needs much marketing support. The general sense garnered from the barrage of available reviews was that the exhibition inadvertently belittled Björk’s achievements. At the entrance to the show, visitors were asked to don headphones on which they listened to a mawkish narrative recounted by Icelandic poet Sjón describing the ‘the progress in life of “a girl”’ (4) who would naturally be assumed to be Björk. Interspersed throughout the museum, awkwardly by most approximations, were dedicated rooms that unpacked particular phases of Björk’s career. In each, related music videos were screened and costumes presented alongside original album artwork. As audiences moved from room to room, the duration of their stay in each was limited to allow for constant audience flow. Sheer audience numbers demanded that visitors were kept moving. Returning to take a second look at particular spaces on the same visit was forbidden, strictly policed by museum attendants (5). The show had to go on. The last room screened a ‘very ordinary music video’ (6) from Björk’s 2015 album ‘Vulnicura’ (7) But how does such a linearly retrospective account of a musician’s career amount to an exhibition? What is the curatorial ambition of a show like this outside its transparent attempts to align a venerable museum’s image with the aura of contemporary pop-cultural success? Surely there would have been alternatives to merely re-packaging the musician’s ‘career’, an exhibition both more demanding and more revealing of the artist’s creative process?
Of course, Björk is by no means the only 'entertainer' to be strategically inserted into the 'serious' territory of the contemporary art institution. Renowned German New Wave film maker Wim Wenders has exhibited in such spaces luxurious photographs from his films and from his travels, LA cult actor Dennis Hopper, whose father was a painter, has shown his paintings, photographs and collages in numerous museum contexts, photographer Annie Liebowitz has likewise exhibited images of celebrities in important art-institutional contexts. Recently it has been another popular cult figure, director David Lynch, whose paintings and other artworks have been curated expressly for the art museum (8). Indeed Lynch, like Björk, is an illuminating example of the trend that sees celebrities art-institutionally venerated. As a director Lynch has utilised popular mediums, film and television, and genres, noir, sit-com, teenage movie, road movie, to craft a truly eclectic, uncompromising, and at times, genuinely difficult, body of work. As with Björk, his ability to twist popular media to significant artistic ends, testifies to an especial tenacity and singularity of vision. However, Lynch’s recent exhibition, unlike Björk’s as a type of museum-situated side effect of her actual creative activity, is of original stand-alone paintings, drawings and multi-media artworks. Yet as art, these seem diminished in comparison to the director’s significant and extensive cinematic achievements. Lynch's visual art evinces an awkward art-brut naivety that contrasts strongly with the sophistication of his dense filmic language. And although 'interesting' as representations of an alternative facet of his creative persona, one has to question whether or not Lynch's painterly works would achieve favour in the highly competitive world of the art museum if it weren't for the high-esteem with which he is held as a film artist with an eminently recognisable ‘brand’. In the absence of such a reputation, Lynch’s visual art would most likely be relegated to the anthropological fetishist’s domain of so-called 'Outisder art'. Arguably, in the case of Lynch’s exhibition, and unlike the way Björk’s show was handled, a much stronger exhibition could have been mounted of the working notes, storyboards, and related background material informing Lynch's filmic output. So while Lynch's visual art promises a glimpse into the directors 'true' interior, the works themselves appear familiarly mannerist and expressionistically generic. A glimpse of the thinking underlying Lynch’s films, which are ostensibly less personal, would actually provide a closer look at the subjective world from which they sprung. In the instances of both Björk’s and Lynch’s exhibitions, more curatorial attention paid to the processes of what they do and what they have achieved, would have been more telling then primary reliance on ‘who’ they are.
One thing is certain though, Björk and Lynch, as well as Wenders, Liebowitz and a host of others who have transcended the limitations of their chosen genres, have all excelled on multiple creative levels. What does it mean then when the global art world’s burgeoning courting of celebrity culture filters through to celebrities with decidedly less artistic ability yet who are determined to present themselves as artists ‘as well’? Take for example the popular US actor James Franco, something of a phenomenon in the world of contemporary Hollywood. Hollywood it would seem though is not enough for Franco who at 37, has wracked-up parallel careers as an author, musician and visual artist (9). Whether or not the creative products of these alternate careers are of much lasting value, means little: celebrity, in a porous and practically infinite global media ecosystem centred on the instantaneity of production and recognition, ultimately transcends itself. The celebrity icon is mediated at the level of the illusive possibility for multiple selves. The traction and appeal of these projected, basically phantasmagoric, self-representations, is simultaneously dependent on a present where attainment of the lifestyles they indicate, remains impossible for the vast majority. In a global sense, most are literally just struggling to survive. Meanwhile, the celebrity-self becomes a fashioned fantasy commodity that paradoxically seems to actually exist. Devotees of celebrity culture have always known at heart they are being fooled, however the immanence of contemporary mediated imagery fulfills a much more convincing illusion.
Another contemporary phenomenon of the entertainer-artist is post-Disney pop starlet Miley Cyrus, currently known primarily for her penchant for sexually suggestive media spectacles, including her performance at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2014. Less known is the fact that Cyrus also sees herself as an artist and produces at a rate, day-glo collages and bricolage-derived sculptures. That these works recall an entire genre of ‘un-monumental’ (10) art practices and have even been compared, incredulously, to the art of Mike Kelley (11), reveals the degree to which the lessons of contemporary ‘high-art’ have been absorbed by attention-seeking celebrity culture. Comparably controversy focused is the Dadaist-sounding ‘Lady Gaga’ who has made a reputation for herself primarily through the artistic manipulation of her own body and image. The performer, who is no stranger to VIP exhibition openings, repeatedly presents herself as something of an ‘avant-garde’ ‘freak’, a chameleon-like outsider decked out in a series of titilatingly ‘outrageous’ costumes. These costumes recall everything from Bauhaus performance theorist Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘Triadic Ballet’, to Salvador Dali’s more obviously lewd ventures into (un-)costuming willing models. Concurrent with Lady Gaga’s reveling in costumes reminiscent of performance art, is their centrality to her quasi-psychedelic music videos. Ironic nonetheless is the extent to which Lady Gaga’s art-aware media-savvy self-presentation subsumes her practice as a musician. Despite her music’s energy, it is invariably flaccid in its un-challenging familiarity, accessibility and highly derivative nature. This does not matter though for the ‘look’ of the artist is fascinating enough to keep the curious enthralled. Perhaps this means that Lady Gaga is more artist than musician? Certainly an impending museum-sponsored exhibition of her clothing and related accoutrements does not seem unlikely.
On the other side of this equation are today’s star collectors and curators with egos on par with the celebrities they seek to corral as supporters and fellow travelers. Some contemporary ‘super curators’ like Hans Ulrich Obrist may seek to perform the role of Oracle-like medium speaking for the artists whose company he collects. Otherwise there are contemporary artists who make a habit of being seen casually ‘hanging out’ with celebrities like British photographer Sam Taylor Wood (12). Yet other artists like painter Elizabeth Peyton have made a career of almost exclusively representing celebrities. In Peyton’s case there appears nonetheless to be at least some degree of ironic distance at play. Then there are artists who deploy celebrities to perform for them in videos and installations such as Cornelia Parker exhibiting actress Tilda Swinton in a glass vitrine at MoMa in 2013.
What of the art institution’s role in this growing phenomenon? In many respects the realities of today’s instantaneously media-saturated age makes the marriage of art and celebrity appear inevitable, even natural? Or is it? It is unlikely that exhibited celebrities consciously approach branded art museums in an effort to augment their fame. They would undoubtedly acquire an additional aura of seriousness by showing in a museum however. Still it is hardly likely they need the exposure, already being household names, unlike contemporary artists. From the most cynical perspective, the increased courting of celebrities by critically regarded art institutions is merely another aspect of their contemporary attempts to survive the present economic climate by cementing an image of themselves as popularly irreproachable. This drive is doubly likely if we cast a glance at the attrition rate of government sponsored art spaces in regions like Europe. In those European countries suffering most from the recent economic downturn, many art institutions, previously hallowed, have fallen by the wayside and been shut down. The overall implication in these scenarios is always that public institutions deemed not public enough, cannot, nor should not, be allowed to survive. Ironically ‘public’ in this scenario, amounts to financially profitable. In the end, the porosity of the contemporary dominant form of capital, neoliberalism, means that all things meet. Even the most acutely critical theorists and philosophers can be turned into the equivalent of ‘rock stars’ and peripheral art world fodder (13). Militant Post-Marxists can be transformed, symbolically at least, into valuable capitalists (14). In this world territorialisation no longer oscillates with deterritorialisation (15) but overlaps it. Global culture into which contemporary art is ever more inextricably enveloped, aims for the utmost visibility and coincides with a worldview where everything and everyone is considered usable for good and ill.
Alex Gawronski
Originally published in Broadsheet vol 44 no. 2, Jun, Jul, Aug 2015. CACSA, Adelaide, Australia.
1. Especially by curators like Klaus Biesenbach, the brainchild of MoMA’s Björk exhibition and director of Ps1, New York. Biesenbach has been criticised on numerous fronts for his self-promoting and status-seeking utilisation of celebrities. See Christian Viveros-Fauné, ‘MoMA Curator Klaus Biesenbach Should be Fired Over Björk Show Debacle’, Artnet News online, March 24, 2015.
2. Jerry Saltz, ‘MoMA’s Björk Disaster’, the Vulture online, March 5, 2015.
3. The impressive clip for ‘All is Full of Love’ in which humanoid robots copulate lovingly on an internally lit industrial slab, is probably the best-known example.
4. Peter Schjeldahl, ‘MoMA’s Embarrassing Björk Crush’, the New Yorker online, March 17, 2015.
5. See Ben Davis, ‘ Ladies and Gentlemen, the Björk show at MoMA is Bad, Really Bad’, March 3, 2015. Artnet News online.
6. The video is ‘Black Lake’ commissioned by MoMA for the exhibition. ibid.
7. ‘Vulnicura’, Björk’s 2015 album has been written about repeatedly as eulogising the break up of her marriage to artist Matthew Barney. Björk’s marriage to Barney, one of the global art world’s most famous personalities (although described by at least one critic Peter Schejldahl, as ‘mercilessly pretentious’) generated much publicity at the time, seen as it was as a true meeting of artistic equals, two creative practitioners at the top of their game.
8. ‘David Lynch: Between Two Worlds’, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Australia, March 14 – June 8, 2015.
9. See Benjamin Hurston, ‘The 11 Professions of James Franco’, Paste Magazine online, July 11, 2013.
10. A tendency of artists working variously with found materials and pop-cultural and other detritus famously represented in the exhibition and catalogue ‘Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century’ at the New Museum New York, December 1 2007 – March 30 2008.
11. And by seminal gallerist Jeffrey Deitch no less. See Zing Tsjeng, ‘Miley Cyrus launches career as visual artist at Art Basel’, Dazed magazine online, December 4, 2014.
12. Most notably Sir Elton John and his entourage. Taylor Wood also produced in 2004 the photo-series ‘Crying Men’ depicting a swathe of well-known male actors and celebrities weeping, or appearing to.
13. The global reputation of well-known Slovenian philosopher and self proclaimed communist, Slavoj Zizek has been repeatedly compared in media releases as equal to that of a ‘rock star’, an ‘Elvis Presley’ of the world of contemporary philosophy.
14. French militant Post Marxist anti-capitalist philosopher Alain Badiou was also curiously claimed in a 2014 survey, to be the world’s highest paid.
15. The concept of territorialisation/deterritorialisation was pioneered by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari and describes the process by which new resistant, radical or transformational knowledge or experience is continually transformed into its other through repetition, utilitsation and familiarisation. The process is endless though as territorialisations provoke detteritorialisations seeking to break the controlling deadlock of institutional capture, the freeing of labour power from specific means of production for example. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, ‘Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’ (1972), Continuum, London, 2004.