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/381/ Contemporary Art: Inane Spectacle & Pompous Discourse, ft. JJ Charlesworth (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-19 07:00:05
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

On contemporary art.

Critic and editor at Art Review, JJ Charlesworth, joins us to talk about why so much contemporary art is bad. We discuss:

Why is art no longer about beauty?

Are we stuck between art that is either superficial or hyperpolitical?

Why has there been a turn towards the mystical and irrational in art?

How are ideas of the indigenous and the ecological represented in art today?

Is there a romantic revolt against reason and is it new?

Links:

Criticism, Art and Theory in 1970s Britain: The Critical War, JJ Charlesworth

The Return of Magic in Art, JJ Charlesworth, Art Review

Gabriel Massan’s Decolonial Games, JJ Charlesworth, Art Review

The naked truth about Marina Abramović – her ‘art’ is a joke, JJ Charlesworth, Telegraph

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Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Glad the interview touched on the point near the end where art has become about reminding you the audience/appreciator that you're ontologically evil and need to remove yourself to stop harming the world with your presence. Very common vibe.

Konrad

Nice episode. I took a winding path to left politics through 90s/00s art criticism, which gave me a window into modern art, introduced me to Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc, and led me to Adorno and the nonsite crew (providing a close-up view of the pitfalls of French Theory). I sometimes wonder whether the spectacle and the pompous discourse aren't just alibis for each other (the former providing the aura of "artness" that the latter lacks, the latter providing the aura of substance the former lacks). But a problem that haunts contemporary art is that the shift from a concern with the question of what the work is and means (which presumes a singular, contestable answer) to a core question of what it makes one feel (with neither a singular answer nor the possibility of a wrong one) undermines whatever "political" aspirations it has. If the work is believed to have no innate, fixed meaning, there are no grounds from which to make its claims (it seems to me that affect theory tried and failed to bridge this gap). The spectacle side of it is similarly hamstrung by this shift, which is why so much contemporary art seems to fail on its own terms: neither the spectacle nor the politics are engaging.

Blake

I think the part about a certain type of artist turning to witchcraft with various degrees of irony is very interesting, maybe worth doing a separate episode on politics and the occult at some point (Crowley alone is a massive rabbithole). I can see some parallels with the original romantic movement and its connection to the post-1815 reactionary order in Europe.