Car Park Art

Contemporary art spans many different and delightful forms. The traditional media such as oil paintings and bronze sculptures still hold their own against more recently developed approaches that use digital media or performance art to create works that are now shaping our modern lives. Therefore the only true concern of art in the twenty-first century is not the 'how' but the 'what'. And that 'what' is the focus of this week's blog.

If you take Picasso's premise that, 'art is a lie that enables us to realise the truth' then we can only truly understand the world through the prism of art. Sadly not everything is considered art, or given the focus by artists. Therefore in order for humanity to survive and prosper it is our duty to turn everything into art and every artist's duty is to do this. I already consider myself and my life as a work of art as outlined in my blog Life is Art. Art is Life. I am Art. Art am I, but I am a trivial irrelevance in the great scheme of things - car parks are not.

If I may modestly quote from my own blog Life is ...a car parking space (one of a number I have contributed on this important subject),

"The car parking space enables society to function, it enables life to happen - it is by proxy the arbiter of your mood, the barometer against which you measure whether you have had a good day, the enabler of activity (or frustrater). It is the lungs of enterprise, the heart of capitalism, the place of that first kiss, the conception of the first child (or fourth child in Ron Howard's case) and ... in dental hygiene."

It is not to overstate the case that the very survival of the human race is dependent upon the creation of more car park art. Only then will society really see itself for what it is and appreciate this most omnipresent of modern architectural phenomena. A new understanding will emerge, one that embraces the lie of the internal combustion engine and its incestuous relationship with the ubiquitous oblong of space. We can only 'realise the truth' of this if art recognises inherent lie that is the car parking space.

I recently discovered a blog post called 'Other Car Park Art' (at http://friarsgate.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/other-car-park-art/) that shows I am not alone in this view. It features art that is based within the car park's oblong environment. The next stage is art independent of the rectangular locus but inspired by, and conveying the inherent truth of, the subject. This is my call to arms for artists everywhere to take up the challenge to populate our modern galleries with 'the truth'. It should be easy - most paintings are rectangles as are most car parking spaces - that is surely no coincidence.

My dream, is that 10 years from now the ten most famous artworks will not be 

• Mona Lisa,
• Starry Night,
• The Last Supper,
• The Sistine Chapel ceiling's Birth of Adam.
• Guernica,
• Girl with the Pearl Earring,
• The Scream,
• Night Watch,
• Water Lilies, and
• The Birth of Venus

but

• Moaning Liza, lipstick on the rear view mirror, an early Renaissance style painting of an enigmatically smiling lady who got the last 'women only' parking space in a Japanese car park see blog Car Parking is a Gender Issue
• Staying All Night, oil on concrete, an abstract of someone getting great value on car park overnight rates
• The Lost Slipper, pen and ink on windscreen, Pre Raphaelite study of the crucial point in the fairytale when Cinderella's pumpkin gets a ticket in a 30 minutes only parking space
• The Ticket Booth's Purse of Ada, pastels in glove compartment, a post impressionistic view of a single object handed in to the security office found on the car park ticket machine
• Milton Keynes, gouache and coloured pencil on lavatory wall, a meditation on the destruction of a whole city through the excessive creation of car parks 
• Girl with the Pearlescent SsangYong, oil stains on hubcap, Fauvist celebration of female asian motoring in a field set aside for the annual Korean mud festival
• The Screaming, salt and watercolour in the petrol tank, a post impressionist breakdown in a residents' only car space
• Night Watchmen, water soluble ink pen in Nuts magazine, constructivist view of the night shift in a 24 hour staffed car park
• Walter's Lilies, watercolour on back seat, impressionist view of a forgotten piece offering gift to a neglected wife in a multi-storey car park
• The Birth of Vera, acrylic on bed sheet, De Stijl abstract of of an incident in the local hospital car park

Artists its now up to you. Make that dream come true

Manifesto for Museums in the 21st Century: participation, participation, participation

What are the three most the important factors in selling your house? Location, location location.
What were the three most important policies of the Tony Blair New Labour administration? Education, education, education.
When visiting Scotland for a holiday what are the three things you most remember? Precipitation, precipitation, precipitation.

Given that we are all thinking about the future of museums and the MA may claim to have 20:20 vision in this respect. The Museum of Unreason Manifesto defines what are actually the three most important things for museums in the 21st century.They are: participation, participation, participation.

BUT, and I believe this is where our profession has gone badly wrong, not participation in the way we have seen it applied recently. We took a wrong turn at the turn of the century when there was a 'Renaissance'. We subsequently wasted £200m on museum access projects for the great unwashed to try and make ourselves relevant. How much more money do we need to spend before we realise that at the end of the first decade its just the same deluded people who continue to visit us. I would compare Renaissance approach to the 'war on drugs' an un-winnable waste of money. The big mistake was to give us the money. We should have given it to non-users to spend on museums.   What a different museum sector that would have given us by 2012. Can we still achieve this in a post Renaissance world?

Given that we are still proudly irrelevant and elitist, happily sacking education staff rather than curators. Money is not coming to us (except to the 'excellent' few) and will never do so again. What is now the prime responsibility of a museum manager? To have fun and engage with non-professionals to create an environment of enjoyable learning that is relevant to modern society? No no no - our prime duty now is to preserve the past, ignore the present and forget about the future.

The constant cry of 'put more collections on show' is wrong. Put less collections on show. 90% of collections are in store being carefully preserved, it should be 100%. Objects should only be brought out upon request (in triplicate) by people who can prove that they will appreciate, understand and learn from them. Most people don't know about them, don't care about them and, if given the chance, will break them.

Access policies? Ban them. Disposal policies? Ban them. Collect, collect, collect. If its old put it in store. Industrial decline = empty warehouses = new museum stores.

You may be asking, what has that to do with participation?

By following this simple strategic approach, museums will empty themselves of 'professionals' and the lifeless clutter of objects. Instead we will create real 'warehouses of the past' lovingly cared for by professional curators in perpetuity. The money saved will then be given to non-users who can then use the empty museums for all the fun and uneducated activity that they want. At a stroke the past is much better preserved and museums become instantly relevant to 21st century society.

Participation, participation, participation? Be true to the idea!

'This is Art War' - how to deal with museum funding cuts

At the last the world is beginning to catch onto cloudy and unreasonable thinking. Globally the museum sector has taken more than its fair share of pain as austerity cuts bite. Museums desperately try and preserve their collections with ever shrinking budgets and staff numbers. Things aren't going to get better any time soon. So creative thinking, innovative thinking, unreasonable thinking is required.

Thus my heart skipped a beat when I read about the director of the Cosario Contemporary Art Museum setting fire to one of his paintings to draw attention to the critical state of funding for his museum.

The painting worth c.£6000 was burnt in the presence of the artist. One assumes the artist was complicit in this act rather than being held back by two burly men whilst hurling unrepeatable invective in the general direction of the fire.

This is inspired unreasonable thinking. The setting fire to museum pieces instantly reduces pressure on the stores and associated collections management responsibilities. It reduces fuel bills and stops the museum being pestered to receive (largely unwanted) donations. Just imagine the conversation when the donator of a treasured heirloom having tearfully given it to the local museum discovers it has been deposited not on display, not in stores, not even in the handling collection, but in the 'winter warmer' pile. With less objects to see, there will be less need for advertising, front of house staff etc. The potential savings are enormous.

However, I think it is an unfortunate precedent that has been set to have the artist present at the destruction. On the plus side it might force Banksy out of his pretentious anonymity, on the downside digging up a Renaissance master and propping him up next to the fire would be inconvenient, costly and a bit smelly. Furthermore I can see some curators objecting to the addition of grave-robbing to their job descriptions.

My recommendation is to forget the artist and get those priceless works straight down to the boiler room (singing as you go is optional) confident in the knowledge that it is the bankers to blame.

The alternative approach of setting fire to bankers is clearly unthinkable or is it just 'unreasonable'?

Read more here http://rt.com/news/italian-crisis-burning-art-497/