Fine Art & the Decorative: current shows at Tate Modern

Yayoi Kusama is showing at Tate modern at the moment. She’s an obsessive artist who plays around with lots of things that we often associate with ‘decoration’. Things like repeat, polka dots, surface ‘design’, creating environments, fashion and so on. It’s such an enjoyable show, and the infinity space is magical. It’s much better seeing it in real life than imagining it from a picture in a book. So go if you can before it shuts on June 5^th 2012.

And while you’re there look at (and buy!) some of the products they have made to go with the show - fantastic plates, tea towels, hankies etc.  She fits into that space between fine art & surface design & her work translates so well into ‘mass production’. She was the first artist to make an installation with her images used as 'wallpaper'.

Although she started off well before the 80s so much of the Tate product that goes with the show has a fantastic 80s feel. And they look great with those lovely black & white Marimekko plates

Damien Hirst is showing at Tate Modern until the 9^th September. Lots of people dismiss him because he makes nice things that make money for him. But he is a product of Thatcherism and central to his artistic practice is the canny business attitude that was at the core of the Thatcher era.

And he makes (or has made for him) beautiful crafted ‘art objects’, especially as his career has progressed and his work has become more ‘decorative’. The work has meaning; it’s not just about being aesthetically pleasing.

He’s not alone. Think of artists like Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol or even Alighiero Boetti (who is at Tate Modern too until 27^th May 2012). 

Their art was backed up with philosophy, with thinking, with ‘meaning’ if you like – not least about the artist being a commercial (or even anti-commercial’ creature). But it’s also fairly easy to grasp because it deals with the stuff we all care most about: life, death, love, sex and so on – in a way that looks nice.

That doesn’t make the work worse – or denigrate them as artists at all in our eyes. We’re just pointing out that the craft involved in the making of it, & the fact that it is pleasing to the eye is really important. It gives us as an audience an ‘in’ to the ideas behind the work, which we can deal with or not, depending on how we feel that day. We spend so much of our lives surrounding ourselves with things that make us feel good when we look at them, or try them on or whatever. 

It’s central to all of our existences, even in the ‘Fine Arts’, even if we don’t all like to admit it.