Yves Michaud: The Crisis of Contemporary Art

It was with great pleasure that I read an article written by the French philosopher Yves Michaud today and with his authorization, I am making available my English translation of his original article below.  For those who read French, here is the link to the original article:

<https://michaudphilo.blogspot.com/2019/03/la-crise-de-lart-contemporain-nouvelle.html>

Contemporary Art in Crisis — the Return

By Yves Michaud

Some of you will no doubt remember the large debate twenty years ago, in 1997, about the crisis in contemporary art, accused at that time of being worse than nothing.  I contributed to this debate with my book La Crise de l’art contemporain, which is still available in the Quadrige collection of books.

I was not pleased with the kind of critique that was used against contemporary art, using aesthetic criteria that vary so much between one person and the next — variations which are all at once both inevitable but also understandable, but which lead to simplistic notions of confrontations between so called “classicists,” “reactionaries,” and the “cool” pretenders of an avant-garde that no longer exists.

For myself, I have interrogated this problem, since 1989 (yes, 1989!) in my book L’Artiste et les commissaires (Artists and the Curators), republished in paperback in 2007 with an extra chapter which confirmed the initial analysis.  The real issue lies in who has control of what is defined as contemporary art, a small clique of official bureaucrats with disputable competence, the Pacquement, Blistène, David, Loisy, Canchy, Criqui, and all the pretentious wannabes that direct the FRAC (Fond Regional d’Art Contemporain — public funds designated to regional art centers for purchase of artworks), and all the kunsthalls that show this official art,  as well as self-proclaimed “art advisors,” all promoting a standardized normative form of contemporary art, all existing within a closed network, their conformity, and above all, their fearful panic of not being “in the mainstream” — which, in effect does not even exist.

I see with a certain pleasure the debate being reborn on a healthier foundation.

No longer are critics of contemporary art simply denouncing it as worse than nothing on an aesthetic and qualitative level, but they are instead questioning the complete obscurity of the mechanisms that work behind the decisions that are being made in this small world of would-be “experts.”  My book from 1989, republished in 2007, is subtitled: “Four Essays Not on Contemporary Art but on Those in Charge of It.”

One cannot deny, however, that the situation has worsened and that a number of “official” artists who receive public commissions and whose work are bought by public entities, are, or have become, effectively worse than nothing.  I sadly think of someone like Claude Lévêque, who I had supported when he was still almost completely unknown, and who has been spoiled by official recognition, his work has fallen into a flat-line triteness that one cannot even call schlock.

Claude Lévêque, “Saturnales,” at the Garnier Opera House, Paris

There is much to be gained by interrogating the problem through the angle of the mechanisms by which this bureaucracy functions as it is horrified by transparency and functions by collusion.  Examining these bureaucrats with the criteria of quality is a lost cause as they are incapable of any real judgement.

Joana Vasconcelos at the Porte de Clignancourt, Paris.

One would like to know who decided to select Joana Vasconcelos, the Jeff Koons with the cardboard suitcase (translator’s note: poor Portuguese immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s left their country in large numbers, with paper suitcases), to plant a 650,000 euro gleaming Heart sculpture, in a poor and deprived neighborhood of Paris.  One would also like to know who put those sauerkraut sausages by [Alain] Jacquet, the weakest of French pop-artists, in a roundabout at Montpellier.  Similarly, one wonders about the crony infiltration and stacking that now rules the Marcel Duchamp Prize, an annex of Pompidou Center conformism.

Alain Jacquet, “Hommage à Confucius,” Montpellier, France.

In short, the cultural version of the self-satisfied oligarchy that is being denounced by the Yellow Jacket protest must be denounced in the world of culture too.

Don’t forget that the FRAC were created by Jack Lang (French Minister of Culture in the 1980’s and early 90’s) as well as Claude Millard under the advice of  the Troche-Cueco Report, and was initiated for the stimulus of regional artistic creation.  It was [Dominique] Bozo, the definition of a statist, who, in the name of expertise and quality, took these public funds and turned these regional art centers into a snobbish bedlam where inexistent works of art are purchased from crony galleries.