I have been quiet on this blog in the last week or so because I have been reading a book which has made me think, combined with a teething toddler who isn’t letting me sleep and a business that is on the verge of being something real and revolutionary. Matthew Collings produces and presents enigmatic TV series on Modern Art, Civilisation and Beauty. His style is personal, ironic, intimate and always thought provoking. However, I was unaware of his writing beyond the TV scripts. I accidentally discovered his book, This is Civilisation in Foyles art section while looking for inspiration for a semiotic study. It is in the wrong section. It is a work of philosophy (although I am sure he would hate that classification).
I was hooked from the first pages as he tells about his parents troubled history and then dives into the Egyptian and Greek art in search of civilization. Suddenly the TV’s relatively flat experience is left behind and replaced by a rich ethnographic descriptions of experiences, essays of art criticism and personal diaries around the script which provide their own engaging and challenging narrative on the topic. It is all left justified, with the art floating in his words – the antidote to the coffee table art books that surround it on the shelf.
Perhaps I am biased but it is his asides on the relation between art and consumerism which have illuminated many new thoughts and insights for me. It has also jump started a perspective on money which has been bubbling for some time now – about the relationship between theory, techne and practices of money.
It is worth quoting one passage in full:
"2. The Pessimists
Fun
In the 1960’s consumerism becomes the dominating value, money wins, especially US money. It offers freedom. You can be an individual and you can measure you individuality by the consumer objects that surround you and reflect yourself back to yourself. We are offered the world: material security, economic wealth and object-infested lifestyle. We know consumerism isn’t the only thing which makes life worth living but we learn to live with the unease and doubt that results from going along with it. Everything seems simultaneously confident and unhinged."
Here for me, is as succinct expression of modern money and the roots of the crisis as I could ever achieve. Here is the paradox written simply and effortlessly. Money has been liberated and in doing so become a separate practice created out of individual experience and culture but by calculation and mathematics. The problem with this situation is that ‘being good with money’ becomes a function of science and education rather than part of the cultural habitus. Innovation lies in the hands of the ‘experts’ rather than the subterfuge of the ‘everyman’. Perhaps it will be art which leads the fightback against the encroachment of our practice of money by the ‘counters’ and ‘regulators’? Will art point out the illusion of certainty created by science? Of course, the irony as Collings points out is that art too has been seduced by money. We value art the way we value any commodity. Money has liberated art and in doing so stripped it of its power to talk about what money is – a power that would require its rejection of money as the ultimate arbiter of value. So perhaps the man who lives without money shows us best what money is?
as a bit of a nerd on the art world, the contemporary art market and how to get art folks and creatives to think about money i keep a growing list of books & videos which i think have useful takes on money & business but which creative folks would find accessible ... so you might find one or two of use & interest (the one on the structure of scientific revolutions was recommended to me by maureen paley and has lots to offer in terms of insight into the art world). here's my current list http://www.mycakefinancialmanagement.co.uk/blog/?p=227
Posted by: Sarah Thelwall | November 18, 2009 at 09:05 AM