QWhat will remain of today’s Art, extreme contemporary art, art in the making? The creations of the students who will become artists, the productions of famous artists, the little-known artists of today and the media artists of tomorrow, what will they become?
Through his compromise with consumer society, his fascination with silver and brilliance, Warhol became a star of the 20th century. Of course he had flair and talent. The young Jeff Koons began by selling investment funds to finance his artistic production, then he made plastic copies, “Disney” versions, of Warhol. Sold at a high price to major collectors and contemporary art manufacturers, art becomes in this context a permanent compromise with the world of money and glitz. Wim Delvoye, a fiery Flemish artist, also fascinated by commerce and the visibility of his ego, invents processes of transgression, with the idea that shocking to please and creating to last are the same thing.
Vanessa Morisset, author and art critic, relates in this fascinating little book one of the works of this artist, choosing a format (therefore the book) which is initially reminiscent of a fictional text. She tells a “story”, the story of a frightening work. Neither article nor exhibition report, this original chronicle adopts a dynamic tone and a certain suspense: it is a question of deciphering the genealogy of this work, and “ the issues that weighed on his destiny “. It is part of the collection “The private life of works”, published by Archivo, which consists of “ report a true and remarkable episode in the life of a work of art “. Here, critical speech turns into a narrative walk, beyond Manichaeism I like/dislike.
The question of the trace is immediately raised, of what will remain in the future archive, here in this case the inscription of a tattoo on the body of a man. A man who lives from precarious jobs, Tim Steiner, accepted a strange proposal from Wim Delvoye, a startling contract: to lend the surface of his back to carry out a tattoo which will make him “ achieve sulphurous and sometimes painful fame “. After tattooing pigs with luxury brands (sold for more than 65,000 euros), Delvoye attacks and attaches himself to the body of a living, young, socially precarious man.
“The action” takes place in 2008, it brings together lawyers, a collector, the artist, and the man “bearer” of the work. Carried out by a professional in a tattoo parlor built for the occasion, in the white cube of a Zurich gallery, the transaction is signed by the artist (signature tattooed above the wearer’s right buttock). “ The transaction was consciously desired by both from the start, including its dimension which we already sense is a little terrifying. », Reminds us the author. Delvoye seems to have turned Robert Filliou’s formula on its head – Art is making life more interesting than art – by the idea thatart is to make commerce more important than art. So, the exacerbation of body art to a deleterious level of manipulation and appropriation: the back of an individual who becomes a man-object who becomes an art object.
« It’s art because it sold », wrote Tim Steiner on his blog, not fooled, it seems, since the sum pocketed by the contract (€150,000) allowed him to finance his rock group. The pact was to exhibit three times a year, then give his back to the collector at the time of his death. Morbid will but will governed by the rules of law, in Switzerland, “ one of the rare countries whereu a law allows you to sell your body for saleçone consenting as in the case of prostitution… Delvoye even goes so far as to declare that he wanted to evoke the ancient slave markets “. The final stage of capitalism succeeds here in transforming art into a prostitution procedure.
I prefer its burlesque antecedent to this nihilistic work, The tattooed one, film directed by Denys de La Patellière in 1968: a collector (Louis de Funès) pursued a former legionnaire (Jean Gabin), in order to buy back from him the work tattooed on his back (signed Modigliani). Dad’s cinema, in the sixties context, was otherwise tasty.
Vanessa Morisset rightly recalls this sentence from Nicolas Bourriaud: “ The history of art is the history of what the rich bought to distinguish themselves from other classes ».
In 1771, returning from an expedition, Captain Cook’s sailors showed off their tattoos as a sign of virile belonging. Tattoo as a sign of sentimental, tribal, identity recognition, then it was the standard of jailbirds, thugs, legionnaires. Art now a sign of distinction for the very rich, the thugs of today, the artists of tomorrow.
In the not-so-distant future, where will our archives go and what will remain of the art being made? If Elon Musk becomes Minister of Culture, will we end up dusty on another planet?
Vanessa Morisset, I won’t end up dusty on a shelfArchivio editions, November 2024, 56 pages, €12.
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