Image Description: h u o (lowercase) interviews A G O (uppercase) at the Royal Academy, London. They talk of “many exhibitions”. Someone else will have to describe the look h u o gives to the camera of his intow film crew. He obscenely licks, then teasingly bites his bottom lip, all the while filming on his own phone camera.

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Wilhelm von Humboldt: “The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” ¹ {00:14}

As a way to cut through an unproductive revulsion² to Gormley, we think it better to concentrate on > A. Gormley Object <, henceforth having been acronymed as A G O. {00:25}

Does Quantum Cloud³ constitute an artwork? If the artificer’s voice or silence matters (we get the sense that Gormley believes it does) we have not found any statement by him making that claim. If, however, the recipient’s voice matters Wikipedia unambiguously describes Quantum Cloud as both a “contemporary sculpture” as well as “Gormley’s tallest sculpture to date”. Conclusively Wikipedia defines ‘sculpture’ as a “branch of the visual arts”.⁴ {00:57}

If Wikipedia is right and Quantum Cloud [from hereon in QC], does constitute a work of art, what differentiates it from objects that do not constitute artworks? The word ‘art’ does not figure at all in the 1744 words that currently form Wikipedia’s entry for ‘Garden Gnome’. Is the distinction initiated by an artwork (QC), between itself and the environment external to it, that for the time being remains not art (garden gnome), attainable in apprehending the artwork and discerning any meaning or lack of? {01:35}

According to Leavis an artwork is defined as “something that should contain within itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise.” If this is an accurate definition, what does QC contain within that distinguishes it from other objects that do not contain within themselves the reason why they are as they are and not otherwise, and therefore do not constitute artworks? Although, we’re not entirely sure what Leavis was going on about, as there appear to be objects that exist beyond the reductive parameters of the art object that do contain within themselves the reason why they are so and not otherwise, such as > A. Gormley-Object < itself, at least in the sense of the cartesian ‘I’. Although the notion of ‘immediate certainties’ such as ‘I think’, as confirmation that the ‘I’ in question irrefutably exists, have been questioned and refuted by others, notably Nietzsche.⁵ {02:31}

Leavis’ statement appears to suggest two possibilities for the identification of an art work:

1. that there is enough of an integral, universal element that is common to all works of art
2. that for the object to constitute a work of art it needs to be good enough to merit the term ‘art’. {02:50}

The first possibility is essentially quantitative, the second qualitative. If the first possibility of Leavis’ criterion can be substantiated this universal element would need to be identifiable; if the second is not erroneous the standards required to constitute an artwork would similarly need to be identifiable. {03:09}

What intrinsic property does QC contain or what threshold of standards does it attain that reveals it as an artwork and not an ordinary, indistinguishable object? The artwork's conception, production, consumption etc., initiates the drawing of a distinction between the work as distinct from ordinary objects, that do not constitute artworks. One does get the sense from looking at Quantum Cloud that the environment in which it sits does not want to be associated with it. The river seems to eye it warily. This, incidentally, is true of the AGO itself: artists do not want to be associated with it. Do tutors at CSM [Central St. Martins] suggest their students check out the AGO’s oeuvre? Can they sell his vacuous, vacant gestures? That Gormley is obviously the non-artist’s artist is not admissible. What is contained within QC that differentiates it from, for example a garden feature⁶ in a private or public garden; the designed product of a garden furniture manufacturer? QC is clearly apprehended, not just by the AGO, as a more distinctly special type of object than any garden feature is considered to be. {04:22}

The above questions, that all revolve around what constituent properties marks QC as an artwork, as something distinct from ordinary objects, are disingenuous because the answer is axiomatic: there is nothing literally contained within QC or any other example of )arthood(, even the less than conspicuous ones, that distinguishes them from ordinary objects. Whether they are functional or aesthetic or a combination of both. That’s where the immediate confusion has been set to lie and repeat itself, to the point of an idiot consensual agreement. {04:53}

The distinction that appears to confirm the status of the artwork and its orientation in terms of where its meanings are initiated is external to the artwork itself. According to Abrams⁷ a given work’s meaning corresponds to one or more of three theoretical coordinates: (1) the artificer of the work; in this case the Gormley-manifestation-theophany-thing-object-organism(?). (2) the subject of the work, that is derived from, or references existing things; what the work is about, what it signifies and reflects from the environment beyond the boundaries of the work and its system. (3) the audience that the work is directed at, or to whose attention the work becomes available (such as Wikipedia). {05:41}

Criticism, analysis or any attempt to understand the work’s meaning, considered in such a way that ignores these coordinates and focuses instead exclusively on the object itself can be attempted but would prove extraordinarily difficult in )arthood’s( swamp-like conditions (particularly with a work produced so conspicuously in the full glare of the institution’s light, by an object not known for hiding its own light under a bushel). Abrams defines this coordinate of rejecting meaning produced outside the work as an ‘objective theory’; of considering the artwork in self-sufficient isolation. But it is likely that whatever potentially distinguishes QC from all other ordinary objects resides in one or more of the aforementioned three theories elaborated by Abrams. {06:31}

As stated it seems to us axiomatic that whatever distinguishes QC as an artwork is not contained literally within the material object. As far as QC is (if it is) distinct as a special type of object, and is consequently differentiated from other indistinguishable objects, it is in its correspondence to its status as having been produced by the AGO. The artificer functions as a rarified, esoteric, special type of person; a self-confirming centre of truth, and to AGO specifically, a tantric permanently erect, self-confirming centre of truth.⁸ The whiff of Sting’s stale, stained yoga shorts lingers ‘round Anthony Gormley Object . A G O. That is A. period, full stop. G period, full stop. O dear... {07:24}

Q: Does the AGO’s status as an arch-capitalist have a bearing on the meaning of QC? {07:33}

A: Gormley, as an arch-capitalist appears to alienate QC. {07:38}

If we accept the notion that QC constitutes an artwork, but fail to discern any feature of it that distinguishes it from other things that are not artworks, the correspondence between it, and the AGO as arch-capitalist cannot succeed in confirming or substantiating the idea that QC is an artwork. Attempts at substantiating statements such as: ‘the AGO is an arch capitalist - it conceived of QC - therefore QC is an arch-capitalist artwork’ or: ‘Wikipedia states that QC is the AGO’s tallest artwork to date - sculptures are a type of the category ‘art-object’ - therefore QC is an art-object’ do not help in identifying the distinction between QC; and things that are not considered to be artworks. Although we are aware that QC is connected with the AGO because it conceived of it under the pretext that a special type of person produces a special type of object, the correspondence itself does not secure, in any useful way, QC as an artwork.⁹ {08:45}

The work initiates meaning by referencing beyond its own system, in the sense of coordinate (2) primarily in the use of the word ‘quantum’ in its title. In addition apparently the work relates to the work of the theoretical physicist David Bohm, which would also constitute reference in the sense of coordinate (2), but this is only known through the AGO himself, through its diarrhoeic rhetoric, so in the sense of coordinate (1): “My interest in David Bohm [...] this notion that everything is becoming, everything is in a state of emergence [...] so when you ask me about Quantum Cloud, I think this is my clumsy way of saying well we aren't just things in space, we are places of transformation”.¹⁰ {09:27}

The AGO reveals, buoyed on by the esoteric nature of his drivel, in a rare exoteric contrite slip of the Coxsackied tongue, he is “dependent on the sensibility and sensitivity of the assistant” and that he thinks “sculpture is collaborative [...] that’s one of its joys actually”. In terms of coordinate (1) we have opted to ignore the AGO’s assistants as they remain more or less anonymous. They are not, at least publicly, given any credit of authorship. Although we have to wonder if they’re as filled with joy as the AGO is himself regarding the prospects of collaboration. Considering the following crass utterances we again wonder if the AGO is even aware of his assistants beyond their purpose as servile tools of production: "This is a wonderful time because it means that everybody is living the life of an artist, which is essentially making up your day as you want," of "doing things for yourself or things that seem the right thing to do for you." {10:26}

In a very general sense all artworks are an expression of their author’s ego in the same way that to utter a statement or to wear certain clothes similarly is. And although the logic of: ‘all artworks constitute expressions of their author’s ego - QC is an expression of the AGO’s ego - therefore QC is an artwork’ does not assist in distinguishing between QC and, for instance, the AGO’s t-shirt/v-neck combination as not constituting an artwork. {10:54}

What we can state with some confidence is that QC is in some very general sense an artwork; the way some things just sort of are or aren't artworks - probably because the artist would say it was if anybody could be arsed to ask (something like Stieglitz’s 1917 questioning photography following the Parisian Salon des Indépendants); that it constitutes the expression of its author’s ego (we speculate that QC’s physical dimensions undoubtedly correlate with AGO’s ego); and finally that its author is an arch-capitalist. {11:26}

It seems to be here at this sorry juncture that some access to Quantum Cloud’s meaning will be apprehended: an object where the individual’s ego overrides any consideration of communal agency and conspicuously coalesces with capital. The meaning of QC is its accumulation (‘density’ for a quantum physics related bootless referential) of capital and its referential of excessively dense egotism. {11:52}

According to the AGO the audience too is not to be let off the hook. They are apparently mobilised to be mutually productive in, presumably some kind of Brechtian, communal interaction with Quantum Cloud. They are “implicated in this field”. He emphasises “collective creativity” and the “participant nature of the observer, in the emerging of what we call reality”. Although the reciprocity of these interactions apparently has its limits. Applying blue and yellow spray paint¹¹ to AGO’s Clasp did not constitute ‘collective creativity’ but in fact £27,000 worth of damage. Similarly the polka-dot bikinis¹² painted onto AGO’s Crosby beach figures was not an expression of the ‘participant nature of the observer’ but merely an example of low-down “vandalism”. These playful examples come closer to Courbet and the Paris Commune’s 1871 destruction of the Vendôme Column than the AGO is ever likely to. The AGO presumably considers Courbet to be his progenitor, along with all those other ‘masters’, from hairy male, pigeon chested, flint-nappers to now. The destruction of public art doesn’t cohere with the AGO’s or the institution's conception of this cringingly erect male sphere, which is focused on ‘giant objects - a reflection of giant egos and unbridled self-regard.’¹³ It is likely that any mutually productive interaction between the audience, as a kind of participant authorial executor and QC is going to function like the relationship between AGO himself and his assistants; more like the relationship between † and the apostles, freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, groomer and groomed, expropriator and expropriated, in a word between oppressor and oppressed. {13:44}

Whatever it is that distinguishes QC as an artwork is defined by its coherence with the AGO’s authority as a self-confirming centre of truth. If QC functions as a manifestation of Bohm’s theoretical physics, it does so by the AGO’s authority; if QC is essentially collaborative in its relations to production and consumption, it is because the AGO informs us it is. Whatever the meaning of QC, it coheres closely with the meaning of the AGO. AGO alienates and subsumes QC along with all its other output and renders an equivalence of meaning. {14:21}

We are still no further, even with accepting Wikipedia’s argument that QC is an artwork, in identifying the distinction between it, other category ‘art’-objects and the environment beyond the parameters of that category of thing. Leavis’ conjecture of an artwork as “something that should contain within itself the reason why it is so and not otherwise'' comes somewhere close, if we accurately get what he was on about but, even so the AGO itself seems to function in the same terms; bearing in mind that even the AGO in its bloated comprehension of itself hasn’t stated it itself constitutes an artwork. On the contrary the artwork seems to be the thing the AGO alienates (Have we discovered a distinction?) in order to inflate itself.¹⁴ Without an elaboration of the distinction marked by QC; and the subsequent non-art environment, there are no standards by which to judge it, no available criterion in which to structure a response. Leaving only a situation of: what is good about a work could also equally constitute what is bad about it; what it contains that could be meaningful, is equally likely to be meaningless; in short: )arthood(. It is here that the bad news intensifies for artists: if they think they are producing something, somehow distinct from the AGO and its glib oeuvre they are mistaken. {15:43}

What does AGO mean? We will never know what it means when it utters sentences like “How can you convey the fact that the presence of somebody is greater or different from their appearance?”. Although we will never know what the AGO means by these aoristic and esoteric mouthings, we may know that the question is rhetorical, in the direct sense that the question is answered by the time it is read. The sentence means the same as QC, which means the same as the AGO, which means the same as all the things Iwona Blazwick or super-curator hans ulrich obrist [huo]¹⁵ have said about the AGO. None of them care whether the QC, the AGO, or for that matter its jumper, are art objects. From their point of view they are all equally useful commodities. {16:31}

There is a synecdochal relationship between the AGO and its output: verbal, textual, material. Each constitutes the other to the point where it forms one object, a gesamtkunstschaftwerk. This object conveys authority in its autonomy as a special type of object defined by its own system, as a self-confirming centre of truth. This authority, as stated, is related to and valorised by the institution of the system of art. The AGO is merely a metonymy of the system of art, characterised by a conspicuous and domineering form of self-description. QC and the AGO function as a totemic example of )arthood(.¹⁶†† Its only potential meaning correlates with its authorship, which, in turn correlates with the system of art. The entire object represents a reproducing, self-describing, self-confirming autotelic entity. If the meaning of QC is ultimately dependent on its own authorship, and its authorship is dependent on the system of art, which is inherently self-descriptive then the work spectacularly achieves a complete obviation of meaning and purpose. {17:41}

If the artwork (and by implication all artworks - remember we have no means of distinguishing between them beyond an ever widening range of purely superficial appearances) is the thing that can be distinguished as an art-object only by some floating, gaseous, spurious authorial declaration then we have no criterion to distinguish in any meaningful way between multiple examples of the category ‘art’-object. This is the same as confirming that all artworks operative within the boundaries of )arthood( are essentially the same objects - only organised differently, materially etc. This seems to confirm a singular purpose of an art object as merely a source of deriving some level of individual (emotional?) satisfaction from formalism, which would finally slam the shutter down on the glib category ‘art’ as ever having anything to do with Humboldt’s essentially anti-capitalist-before-it-existed libetarian sentiments quoted above. Even if just Leavis’ contention was used, it could form the potential of a substantive attempt to distinguish between the thing the artwork contains within itself that constitutes what it is and not other, to be a better thing than some other example of what an artwork contains that constitutes what it is and not other. Allowing us to state with some assurity that ‘this is better than that’. A metaphorical crowbar under the padlocked shutter, lifted just enough to let the rats out. {19:08}

When the AGO stammers of itself “I want them to be m-m-metaphoric of c-c-course, to be a g-g-ground onto which you p-p-project your feelings” it’s right. This is all anyone can do in response to Quantum Cloud. There is a perverse sense in which Quantum Cloud is entirely indistinct from any environment beyond the boundaries of its own system. It functions purely as a devotional representation of its own system. It cannot be criticised in any useful sense. All that can be said of it is that it seems entirely appropriate in its fatuous status as Gormley’s tallest sculpture to date. Its relations of production are marked by the complete preclusion of the possibility to err, or to learn, or for criticism to function; the wholesale undoing of what constitutes the only hope we have left. {19:59}

¹

Humboldt’s The Sphere and Duties of Government. Used by John Stuart Mill as the epigraph to On Liberty The Limits Of State Action (original German title Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen) is a philosophical treatise by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Though written in the early 1790s, it was not published in its entirety until 1852, long after von Humboldt's death in 1835. It was a significant source for the ideas that John Stuart Mill popularized in his 1859 book On Liberty, and is discussed favorably by Mill in the third chapter of that work, "Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being. Mill had access to an 1854 English translation under the title The Sphere and Duties of Government.

²

POINTS OF REVULSION
1.    the gap-year thoughts of a hippy eastern mystic bent… “Ya, spent ma gap yah in India, ya Charity...” [see video 1a] the private school boy/ oxbridge sense of entitlement transformed into that of an uncritical pseudo-intellectual profundity.


2.    the smugness and self-satisfaction on a level that can make you physically gag. A monumental arrogance unconstrained by the actual reality of his work.

3.    the mannered, slowed spoken delivery that he must imagine gives gravitas to his cretinous musings, if it weren’t for the obvious theatrical manner you’d immediately diagnose the village idiot.

4.    When he plays the soothsaying, cum-dick swinging post-enlightenment caveman, Hey Rousseau! His shift from a greasy hippy liberalism to a smooth neoliberalism is seamless.

5.    Three: Me, Me, Me.
If Sir R Branson was a sculptor he would be…
If Sir T Blair artistic pretensions didn’t lie in Ugly Rumours, he would make sculpture like…
If Sir N Serota has an undisclosed collegial connection in regards to AGO’s Whitechapel show...?

³

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as read by Oliver [ enhanced] English UK.,
The Quantum Cloud is a contemporary sculpture, designed by Antony Gormley, located next to The O2 in London. The sculpture was commissioned for the site and was completed in 1999. At 30 metres (98 ft) high, it is Gormley's tallest sculpture to date (taller than the Angel of the North). It is constructed from a collection of tetrahedral units made from 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) long sections of steel. The steel sections were arranged using a computer model with a random walk algorithm starting from points on the surface of an enlarged figure based on Gormley's body that forms a residual outline at the centre of the sculpture.
In designing Quantum Cloud, Antony Gormley was influenced by Basil Hiley, quantum physicist (and long-time colleague of David Bohm). The idea for Quantum Cloud came from Hiley's thoughts on pre-space as a mathematical structure underlying space-time and matter, and his comment that “algebra is the relationship of relationships.” repeat “algebra is the relationship of relationships.” repeat “algebra is the relationship of relationships.” Did you get that? The comment was made during a conversation between Gormley, Hiley and writer David Prat at a 1999 London gathering of artists and scientists, organized by Prat.
The sculpture's structural design was by Elliott Wood Partnership while the foundation design was by Beckett Rankine. Fabrication was by Tubeworkers (Structures) Ltd.

⁴

Regarding our use of terminology: ‘Quantum Cloud’ refers to an object conceived by Antony Gormley and situated on a pier in the River Thames, East London, England. ‘> A. Gormley Object <’ refers to Sir Antony Mark David Gormley, OBE. We are not sure of the nature, if any, of the correspondence between the two distinct things, or if any potential correspondence has any bearing on any potential meaning associated with either thing. We do know that AGO knows QC and AGO as one, indivisible, beautiful unit.

⁵

Nietzsche refutes the validity of ‘immediate certainties’ and ‘absolute knowledge’ such as ‘I think’, as they imply “...knowledge here got hold of its object pure and naked, as ‘thing in itself’”. He asserts that the sentence ‘I think’ contains inherent contradictions ; at best “a series of rash assertions which are difficult, perhaps impossible to prove” - that it is ‘I’ that thinks, that it is something at all that thinks, that thinking is somehow caused by the ‘I’, and that ‘I’ even exists. He argues that what is defined as ‘thinking’ is something already determined - having been interpreted externally, as it were; we must already know what thinking is, otherwise what standard could help us determine ‘thinking’ from some other responsive operation? The sentence ‘I think’ functions on the basis that we compare what we are doing with other operations in order to determine what we are doing. This ‘retrospective connection’ with other operations precludes ‘immediate certainties’. Therefore ‘I’ is not necessarily, and should not be assumed to be, the cause of thought. For Nietzsche a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, not when ‘I’ want. Problematically regarding the AGO and ‘it thinks therefore it is’, this ‘it’ already contains an interpretation of the event of the thoughtful AGO and so does not belong to the event itself. For Nietzsche “the inference here is in accordance with the habit of grammar: ‘thinking is an activity, to every activity pertains one who acts, consequently -’.” (Beyond Good and Evil). Some such reference as , unchecked, as yet, Malcolm Bull comma question mark. Dave, I’ll try and check on this by the fifteenth.

<sup>6


7</sup>

M. H. Abrams (1953) The Mirror and the Lamp

⁸

By way of an example from the loose lips of Anish Kapoor: “I have now made a number of ‘Dismemberment’ works of which ‘Site 1’ is the most significant. ‘Dismemberment’ refers to taking apart of a body. In much sculpture in the landscape body and land are seen as synonymous with each other. Dismemberment ritualizes this connection.[...]” Quoted by Terry Atkinson in EXHIBITIONISM, DISTRIBUTIONISM, MARKETISM, PRODUCTIONISM, WEALTHISM, LACK OF WEALTHISM (2016)
Atkinson: “These remarks of Kapoor conform precisely to the standard rhetoric of artists who cleave to the concept of the artist as a self-confirming centre of truth. This is also the rhetoric of corporate self-regarding grandeur. The money is corporate, sure, but the art is no less corporate – it is the perfect match. [...] Back to earth, examining more closely Kapoor’s rhetoric, inquire after the following: (I) “ I have now made a number of ‘dismemberment’ works of which ‘Site 1’ is the most significant …”
Firstly, who says it is significant? Kapoor, obviously! But what criterion does Kapoor use in making this judgement? How does it work out that an artist can presume their work to be significant? Is this a matter of singular personal conviction? Or, is it that even with a determined personal conviction that their work is of high quality, then the artist does need to have some kind of public consensus to back up and justify their personal conviction? If this is Kapoor speaking as if he believes he is a self-confirming centre of truth, does there have to be some kind public consensus believing that there is such a thing as an artist as a self-confirming centre of truth? I am arguing here that much of the current rhetoric used in evaluating artists’ work rests upon what has now become an implicit embrace by the speakers/writers of the rhetoric of the concept of the artist as a self-confirming centre of truth? Kapoor is no exception, in fact not least because he is relatively well known he is a clear example of the mutually reinforcing conceit holding between him and his erstwhile publics in the Neoliberal administrations of the West.
Kapoor however is also stating not just that this particular ‘dismemberment’ work is significant but that it is the most significant ‘dismemberment’ work. So, presumably, the ‘dismemberment’ works possess different grades of significance. All are significant, alleges Kapoor, but some are more significant than others. Presumably too, Alan Gibbs [Alan Gibbs purchased Dismemberment, site 1. It is on permanent display at Gibbs Farm, New Zealand the site of some of Gibbs’ private collection] judges this particular work of Kapoor’s to be a significant ‘dismemberment’ work. It would be of some significance (to stick with Kapoor’s evaluative term!) to compare Kapoor’s notion of significance with that of Gibbs. How far, if at all, is Gibbs’ criteria for measuring the significance of Kapoor’s Gibbs Farm work a result of being told by Kapoor that the work is significant? That is to say, does Kapoor’s notion of significance in any way influence Gibbs’ notion of significance? Or, vice versa? If, for instance, since Gibbs commissioned the works, then it seems obvious that it is in Gibbs’ self-interest to claim that the works at Gibbs Park are all significant works. It is not logical to assume that Gibbs would commission work that he thought insignificant or some such as not very significant. Thus, is it not equally likely Gibbs is persuaded to hold such sentiments that Kapoor’s works are ‘significant’ by the widely held consensus in the art world that the successful artist is, allegedly by definition, a self-confirming centre of truth? That is, is it the case that both Kapoor and Gibbs are highly conditioned subjects of the same particular ideology? More explicitly, in the view of this consensus constituency, that an artist is significant because she or he is a self-confirming centre of truth. Is it not the case that the ideology claiming the artistic subject to be a self-confirming centre of truth is likely to be shared by Kapoor and Gibbs? This kind of belief is often buttressed by the further belief that such a thing as ‘significant’ art transcends ideology. But a counterclaim, to repeat yet again, to this is formed by the following question: is it not the case, yet again, that the claim that what this transcendence transcends is ideology, is itself an ideological claim? The argument that art transcends ideology inexorably falls back, in one form or another, on the concept of beauty. And, despite the evidence to the contrary, this view usually betokens a belief that the concept of beauty is not a conditioned response but a natural hard-wired uniformly and universally species-wide shared response. That is, whilst we may all share the concept of beauty, it is rather the things we claim to be beautiful that differ (the ’beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ argument). Kapoor has many admirers and a widely accepting Western public reception. But the same question that is asked here of both Kapoor’s and Gibbs’ judgement can equally be applied to the judgement of their admirers and this public?” Terry Atkinson 2016) EXHIBITIONISM, DISTRIBUTIONISM, MARKETISM, PRODUCTIONISM, WEALTHISM, LACK OF WEALTHISM https://sites.google.com/a/kynastonmcshine.org.uk/primitive-propositions-a-proposal-for-exhibition/home/-exhbitionism-distributionism-marketism-productionism-wealthism-lack-of-wealthism-by-terry-atkinson#target12

“Courbet, if what testimony we have of his view of himself at that time is to be taken at its word, never rid himself of this notion of the artist as a self-confirming centre of truth throughout his participation in the Paris Commune. A self made by the self’s own choices - in this there resides a strong suspicion of circularity. [...] According to the logic of the concept, the concept of the self as a self-confirming centre of truth holds the self to be, by definition, autonomous and is the great dream and illusion represented by what the twentieth century art world called some such as the authentic, autonomous self. It is no coincidence that Rockefeller, for example, probably held the notion of the entrepreneur to be such a self.” Terry Atkinson (2017) The AGMOAS is now a Corporate Audit (pp.35-6) published by Kynastonmcshine.org.uk

⁹

Image Description: A screen recording of the following text recorded on NOTES, 11th April 2021:
THE DATED ROMANTIC SHIFT. We think it’s important to know who possesses this gift and who doesn’t because we accord people who have it special rights and privileges. We allow them to assert a domineering level of authority, that only perpetuates hierarchical structures, which they should be called upon to justify if it is to be retained. At an extreme level, the romantic myth of the artist suggests that people with such gifts cannot be subjected to the constraints imposed on other members of society; we must allow them to violate rules of decorum, propriety, and common sense that everyone else must follow or risk being pun­ished for. The myth suggests that in return society receives work of unique character and invaluable quality.
Such a belief does not appear in all, or even most, societies; it may be unique to Western European societies, and those influenced by them since the Renaissance. Michael Baxandall (1972) pinpoints the shift in European thinking on this point as occurring during the fifteenth century, finding evidence in changes in the contracts made between painters and the purchasers of their work. At one point, contracts specified the character of the painting, the methods of payment, and, especially, the quality of the colours to be used, insisting on the use of gold and the more expensive varieties of blue (some being considerably cheaper than others). Thus, a contract in 1485 between Domenico Ghirlandaio and one client specified, among other things, that the painter should: “colour the panel at his own expense with good colours and with powdered gold on such ornaments as demand it .. . and the blue must be ultramarine of the value about four florins the ounce.” (Quoted in Baxandall, 1972, p. 6) This resembles the contract one might make with a builder, specifying the quality of steel and concrete to be used. At the same time, or even earlier, some clients were specifying materials less and skill more. Thus, a contract in 1445, between Piero della Francesca and an ecclesiastical client, while it did not fail to specify gold and ultramarine, put a greater emphasis on the value of the painter's skill, insisting that “no painter may put his hand to the brush other than Piero himself" (Quoted in Baxandall, 1972, p. 20). Another contract was more detailed: “The said master Luca is bound and promises to paint (1) all the figures to be done on the said vault, and (2) especially the faces and all the parts of the figures from the middle of each figure upwards, and (3) that no painting should be done on it without Luca himself being present. ... And it is agreed (4) that all the mixing of colours should be done by the said master Luca himself.” (Quoted in Baxandall, 1972, p. 23) This is a very different kind of contract. Here the client wants to be sure that he is getting his money's worth of a property, something rarer than four-florin ultramarine, namely, the unique skill of an artist. "The fifteenth-century client seems to have made his opulent gestures more and more by becoming a conspic­uous buyer of skill" (Baxandall, 1972, p. 23). This shift moves only part of the way to today's fully developed belief that the art work consists mainly of the expression of the skill and vision of a great artist or an, as yet unrecognized special type of person. It recog­nizes the artist as someone special, but awards artists no special rights. That came later.
These assumptions-cum-conventions are demonstrated in Brecht’s titular term ‘messingkauf’ which literally means ‘the purchase of brass’: “Oh, I’ve got nothing against feelings. I agree that feelings are necessary if representations, imitations of events from people’s social life are to be possible; also that such imitations must stimulate feelings. The only thing that worries me is whether your feelings- more specifically your efforts to stimulate certain particular feelings- square with your imitations. You see, I’m afraid I must stick by my point that my main interest is in these events from real life. So let me strew once more that I feel I’m an intruder and outsider in this building with all its mysterious practical bits of apparatus; like someone who has not come in to enjoy a sense of comfort and would have hesitation in generating discomfort, as he has come with a quite particular interest whose particularity cannot be overstressed. The particularity of my interest so strikes me that I can only compare myself with a man, say, who deals in scrap metal and goes up to a brass band to buy, not a trumpet, let’s say, but simply brass. The trumpeter’s trumpet is made of brass, but he’ll hardly want to sell it as such, by its value as brass, as so many ounces of brass. All the same, that’s how I ransack your theatre for events between people, such as you do more or less imitate even if your imitations are for a very different purpose than my satisfaction. To put it in a nutshell: I’m looking for a way of getting incidents between people imitated for certain purposes; I’ve heard that you supply such imitations; and now I hope to find out if they are the kind of imitations I can use.” The Messingkauf Dialogues (Written between 1939 and 1942, If you have 50 minutes spare, see https://youtu.be/oZHJ1vaIGh8)
Because artists have special gifts, because they produce work thought to be of great importance to a society, and because they therefore get special privileges, people want to make sure that only those who really have the gift, the talent, and the skill attain the privileged position. Special mech­anisms sort out successful artists from unsuccessful artists. Societies, me­dia within societies, vary in how they do this. At one extreme, a guild or academy (Pevsner, 1940) may stipulate a long ap­prenticeship and prevent or undermine or deter those it does not license from practicing. In certain cultural contexts where the state restricts and limits art’s auton­omy; where institutions, the seemingly only available opportunity for artists to get their training and access to necessary skills, may similarly be restricted. At another extreme, exemplified by such countries as the United States, everyone can learn; participants in the making of art rely on the market to weed out the talented from the pack. In such systems, society maintains the idea that artists have a special gift under the pretext that there is no way to tell who has it outside of letting everyone try and subsequently inspecting the results. Ultimately it is left to the institution following the market to make the call. It cannot explain the call beyond being merely reactive to the market but it does not anticipate the call being questioned on the basis that to do so would reveal the questioner to be philistine or simply lacking in the requisite understanding and knowledge. Clearly this is a form of understanding and knowledge that, we would suggest, does not actually exist if it cannot be demonstrated.

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See Footnote 3

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https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/antony-gormley-statue-vandalised-newcastle-16270093

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Page 90, Terry Atkinson, 2019, published by con-fin edizioni d’Arte&Cultura (work: 1984, Death to Public Art, pencil and collage print on graph paper, 30 x 21 cm)

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Wasn’t it Frédéric Gée that said: “The object is only a detour on the royal road of subjectivity … it is only the alienated, accursed part of the subject … its only glory would be to enter into a master-slave dialectic, where one can see the dawning of a new gospel, the promise of the object changing into the subject.”? Fatal Strategies (1983)

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