WHAT IS IT THAT COMPELS millions of people every year to visit art museums → see Q? Why do people spend unspeakable amounts of money on art → see M? When did every city decide it needed a crazy-looking art gallery → see U? Why do so many students go to art school when the odds of making it as an artist are stacked against them → see D? And just why are so many of us drawn to all of this? In short, why do we care about art?
Because art can do things. At its most basic, it can offer a respite from the humdrum routine of everyday life, lifting us out of ourselves by inviting us to experience something out of the ordinary. But at its best, it is incredibly ambitious. It prompts us to think about life’s bigger questions, shows us our preconceptions and challenges assumptions we might never have known we had → see O. And when it works it can be tremendous, appealing to our emotions and tapping into a shared consciousness among people with differing life experiences.
In an era when conflicts can escalate so quickly and political thinking can be so polarized and entrenched, art can offer an opportunity to question, provoke and imagine; it can stimulate debate and encourage conversation with others. It is able to do so precisely because it does not prescribe one point of view, but allows for multiple meanings to emerge → see K. In showing us that things can be approached from many different perspectives, art, by its very nature, challenges the status quo. It shows that things don’t have to be the way they are, and this makes art a driving force for change → see R.
Like our contemporary world, today’s art is not fixed, but always shifting and growing. Contemporary art articulates our present. It offers us an opportunity to process our experience alongside today’s artists and make sense of today’s world with them → see Y. Describing her role as an artist, the photographer Catherine Opie, known for her images of the communities and landscapes of contemporary America, explained: ‘One of the reasons that I have been driven to the idea of creating moments of representation of my time is not only finding myself within that, it’s also this unbelievable human need.’
Like our contemporary world, today’s art is not fixed, but always shifting and growing. Contemporary art articulates our present.
It is this ceaseless drive to question and to understand that makes great artists so inspiring and fascinating. For virtually any artist who survives the tests of the art world, making art is a compulsion, a way of making sense. Whether their motivations come from working through personal experiences, or their goals are more outward-looking and political, making art takes courage. At the end of the day, to make an artwork is to put a piece of yourself out into the world, at the risk of judgment, and to proclaim your thoughts as worthy of attention. Making art is about embarking on a course of action without knowing quite where it will end up, without fear of failure or any guarantee of reward. That takes guts. It is these risk-takers to whom we owe all the extraordinary art that inspires us. So as we set out on this journey through the art world, let’s not forget the words of legendary art historian E. H. Gombrich: ‘There is no such thing as art. There are only artists.’
ALTHOUGH WE THINK OF ART as the creation of an artist, the truth is, it often takes hundreds of people to make art happen. Yes, it’s the artist who generates the idea, but bringing those ideas to fruition and to an audience involves a whole host of people along the way.
Take the work of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, for example. Anatsui is well known for his large-scale sculpted metal wall-sculptures, created using thousands of bottle caps sourced from local recycling stations. At his studio in Nsukka, Nigeria, Anatsui works with an extensive team of assistants to fold, crumple, crush and carefully stitch the bottle caps together into intricate and colourfully patterned sculptural hangings.
As a matter of principle, Anatsui does not provide installation instructions, so these works take on radically new shapes with each installation. There isn’t any one particular way each of his works should be installed; rather they can respond to the particularities of the space in which they are exhibited. In one venue, they may be hung from the wall, in another folded or placed on the ground; once, some works were even draped over a hedge when they were shown in a garden. These decisions of display will be taken in tandem with the installation team, which includes curators and conservators who can advise on optimal ways to show the work → see J, → see T. Lifting these heavy and delicate wall-hangings requires a team of trained art handlers, as well as a few scissor lifts. Achieving the rippled effect of drapery is a complex process involving technicians schooled in a special system of supports and fixtures. And let’s not forget all the staff at the museum where the work is shown → see Q and at the galleries who make the sales to fund its production → see N.
At the end of the day, it’s all about teamwork. Whether the artist works alone with a paintbrush or with a production crew to make an idea come alive, there’s no escaping the fact that it takes an entire art world to share it with everybody else.