THE SHOCK OF THE NOW:
AN
INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW COLLINGS
LONDON, ENGLAND--Perhaps the critic most likely to succeed Robert Hughes as the pre-eminent televisual interpreter of contemporary painting and sculpture is Matthew Collings, whose 6-part television series This Is Modern Art recently appeared on Britain�s Channel Four (it has just been acquired by PBS) along with a handsomely illustrated companion volume published in London by Weidenfeld and Nicholson (Watson-Guptil in the USA).
Collings is close to the new wave of Young British Art featured at the Brooklyn Museum of Art�s �Sensation� exhibit. He is a friend of Tracy Emin, who is featured in a photo with Collings in his new book while the couple travelled to Norway to channel Edward Munch�s �The Scream.� Last month he lectured on Young British Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
Collings� earlier books Blimey! and It Hurts were heartfelt, stream-of-consciousness screeds, part Andy Warhol diary and part T. J. Clark monograph. But for his television series, the author appears to have shifted gears, toning down his strong personal reactions and instead trying to explain in a more matter-of-fact way why modern art does what it does.
While Hughes� hurls thunderbolts, Collings� has adopted a more soothing television persona akin to Alistair Cooke�s This-Won�t-Hurt-A-Bit style. He is enthusiastic about modern art, especially contemporary British art. His enthusiasm is infectious, and helps explain why England is in such a tizzy over art that has left New York perplexed.
Collings has two more television series in the works. One will be about culture, called �Hello, Culture!� The other will be about the Old Masters. Collings will soon publish his diaries, a regular feature of the arts journal Modern Painters, in book form, using his own etchings as illustrations.
The product of bohemian parents and children�s homes, Collings was trained as a painter at The Byam Shaw Art School, in London, in the early Seventies, and worked on the art magazine Artscribe, from 1979-1983 before taking over as Editor of Artscribe and � in 1985 � relaunching it as Artscribe International, with backing from American publishers. The magazine folded in 1992. In 1987 he left Artscribe and the following year went to the BBC to work on the BBC�s arts program �The Late Show,� where he produced and presented segments, mostly on contemporary art. He remained at the BBC until 1996 when he left to concentrate on his own writing.
After an email exchange, the Idler had lunch with Collings at the Afghan Kitchen in Islington (a district represented by Tony Blair before he became Prime Minister), the London borough in which Collings lives with the mosaic artist Emma Biggs and their blended family . The following interview has been compiled from email and live conversations.
IDLER: How did your television series come about?
COLLINGS: "This Is Modern Art" originated as a commission from Channel Four to write and present a series about Modern Art. At the time I had just written a book about the London art scene called Blimey!, which was presented in a kind of mix of styles -- descriptive, anecdotal, diaristic. Also the book had a very compressed way of putting things, which at the same time could sometimes seem as if nothing much at all was being said. It's hard to explain this in any other way -- you have to read the book!
So this was the language I wanted to carry over into the TV series. I thought it would be a realistic, normal approach which would be OK for TV because it wouldn't alienate non-insiders or seem to talk down to them, and also would engage art world insiders. It's a very honed, labour intensive style, or created voice, that tires me out to create. But the effect is of seeming to be quite relaxed and I think people like that.
IDLER: How has the response been?
COLLINGS: Well you�re the only one to say the series was like Alistair Cooke! That�s pretty wild. The press response to it was very excitable. Mostly positive but sometimes not. The positive response sometimes described me in ways I don�t like (jolly, friendly, enthusiastic, etc) because it sounds clownish. The anti-line is usually that I am a barbarian and thick.
In any case, there was a lot of response somewhere between these extremes and the series was considered to be successful by TV people. (Now I'm working on another one about "Culture" -- it's about where culture comes from; what we want it to do; how we ask it to describe to ourselves what we are. It�s quite ambitious.)
IDLER: Do you see a conflict between being intelligent and being accessible as a critic?
COLLINGS: Well, with "This Is Modern Art" -- my intention was to be as intelligent as possible, which is what I always try to be. And expressive and communicative. And (in this case) to take the TV medium seriously as well as the subject of the series. I mean, I wanted to make both things really work well � Modern art and TV -- not just one thing or the other. Some parts of the series were quite jokey and spacey, I suppose. And some were more dense and argumentative. But it's not like you could really see the seams. One thing tended to flow into another, and the lecturing and joking weren't all that glaringly different.
In the series I took the line that non-insiders have particular ideas about Modern Art. Typically they think it's deliberately ugly; or it�s shocking; or empty; or ironic; and that it�s full of people who are geniuses. So I took these themes quite seriously and tried to explore them � How true are they? How do they stand up? I made an hour-long programme for each of them, with another one added on. This was the theme of utter contemporaneity: how do you evaluate that which is going on right in front of you, in your own time, when posterity hasn't had a go at sorting out the good and the bad? That is, how do you think for yourself?
So, anyway, one of the episodes was called Nothing Matters. It was about the idea that Modern art is full of blanks -- blank canvasses, all-white canvasses, all-black ones, squares, metal cubes, gasses, voids, etc. Emptiness is bad of course so that's a good reason not to bother with Modern art, many people think. The episode ran through various examples of blankness, looking at where it was attitudinous, aggressive, spiritual, lovely, elegant, nasty, whatever. On the whole it was about Minimalism. The historical artists discussed included Ryman, Malevich, Yves Klein, Rothko, Judd, Andre. I told the stories of these artists, looked at what blankness or emptiness might have meant to them, and at the differences between them, and how their various myths have built up. Then the episode started merging a bit into Conceptualism and then it went into a more punky nihilistic idea of "nothing," picking up on the word-play of the title.
Then I looked at some contemporary artists who'd been brought up on an 80s notion of blankness and irony and what they're coming up with now. The episode ended with a look at James Turrell's recent sky-thing at PS1. -- I think it was called �Meeting� -- with the thought that Turrell is a kind of exemplar of a rather empty idea of emptiness that we now have. At least that the New York art world certainly now has, and which everyone else kind of goes along with. Where there are no ideologies or ideas or difficulties at all. Just weekened post-brunch entertainment- Minimalism and a bit of Tibet-supporting spiritualism-LITE. But the thought wasn't an angry one particularly and it was granted that there is in fact some genuine pleasure to be had from zoning out on your back on that little bench in Turrell's installation, looking at the sky change colour. Even if it�s absolutely meaningless and a bit pretentious.
The other episodes all had this same thing of standing aside from received art world ideas sometimes, and at other times more whole-heartedly inhabiting them. The general effect of stylishness and intelligence was helped a lot by the series-producer, Ian MacMillan, who I�ve worked with a lot, being a very talented and clever guy. And also the programmes were shot on film rather than tape and the production was very luxurious and well-budgeted. There was lots of filming around the world and lots of creative use of unlikely music -- ranging from Gary Glitter (in a section about Martin Kippenberger) to various bits and pieces commissioned from various indy bands. There was a much more unified feel between the ideas and the images than you would normally expect from an arts programme. Usually they are much more wooden.
IDLER: How, precisely, do you go about your writing?
COLLINGS: I write on a word-processor. I do a lot of preparing � making notes, reading. Then I generate a lot of material on the word processor quite quickly. Then I go back and refine and hone and re-write. I buy these plastic backed notebooks at Kate�s Paperie on Broadway in Soho in NYC. I keep the notes for ages � I still have some relating to a tour round Donald Judd�s building on Greene Street, which I�m going to use in some future book. I buy lots of fountain pens and lose them.
IDLER: It seems your series follows up on Robert Hughes� �The Shock of the New.� What do you think of Robert Hughes and his work?
COLLINGS: I don�t feel connected to him in any way. I think he�s out of touch with contemporary art. I�m not sure if he would even disagree with that. I liked his book The Fatal Shore, I found it very moving.
IDLER: Some readers were disappointed that �This Is Modern Art� is not as personal as your first two books. Why did you change your approach?
COLLINGS: It�s deliberately not the same as the previous two books. It is very personal. But it�s not essentially diaristic. It hardly got any reviews because attention was focused on the TV series, but the reviews it got were good when they were by serious writers. The negative ones weren�t serious! Actually they�re positive or negative the reviewers tend to view me as a popularizer of Modern art. But I think I've probably become popular because I don't care about being popular, or feel it's my duty to evangelize anything. Or to seek to make art�s meanings more popular. (It's like Duchamp, when he was asked in the early 60s why, when he'd wanted to destroy the aesthetic, his bottle racks and bicycle wheels etc now seemed so aesthetic, he replied: "Well no one's perfect!")
IDLER: How does your series differ from other television arts programming?
COLLINGS: I have a familiarity with the art world and and with TV. That�s quite rare. I see TV as, at least to some extent, an artistic enclave, or somewhere creative. Not just a place of barbarians. When I was at art school TV programmes about art seemed completely irrelevant. It was obvious that thoughts, opinions, facts were distorted in order to make a story for TV.
When I arrived at the BBC in 1988 I got a few video tapes out of the archives, recording recent BBC programmes on contemporary art. I was amazed by their sleaziness, vulgarity, and sensationalism.
IDLER: Which critics do you admire?
COLLINGS: I like George Orwell�s essay on Dali which I believe was written in the 40s; I don't think anyone has ever been clearer on Dali. Orwell thinks about correct moral behavior and I like that very much.
IDLER: And contemporary critics?
COLLINGS: I don't believe in the narrowness of art criticism as I find it nowadays. But I�m not anti-intellectual.
IDLER: What about Sister Wendy? Didn�t she used to write for you when you were editing Artscribe?
COLLINGS: I stopped using Sister Wendy after she sent in two unsolicited reviews (in about 1984 or 85 or some time) because the writing was uninformed. I don't really think about her much. I find it absurd when I see her written about seriously in Art in America -- but then, I find Art in America mostly absurd!
IDLER: How about Hilton Kramer?
COLLINGS: I don't identify with his political views (as far as I know what they are!). But I believe he expresses himself really well and is a good character. He�s a good antidote to the present power-elite in New York art world. I would say I share his admiration for heroic early period Modernism. But he seems to also like a kind of twee, pointless, latter-day figurative Modernism which is a kind of soft off-shoot of the real thing -- like Fairfield Porter or Richard Diebenkorn, etc, which means very little to me.
IDLER: But you share a reaction against the New York art scene of today?
COLLINGS: The New York art world has never been so bad. It's full of hopeless photos by 20-somethings and vacuous PC thoughts. It's all like that: the curators at the museums; editors of the mags; people in the private galleries; the artists! That's why I enjoy Kramer. Not because I think he's right but because he's a relief from the zombie drone of the other side. I don�t really identify with either side.
IDLER: Yet Tom Wolfe�s �The Painted Word� is not among your favorites?
COLLINGS: I like his Mau Mau essay from the Sixties and that�s it. I suppose in �The Painted Word� he�s expressing some kind of resentment. He feels rejected by what he sees as an insiders� club maybe. But that�s his problem, not the club�s. He has a fake intelligence behind flowery words; whereas the art system he believes he is wittily knocking in that book has a genuine intelligence behind sometimes dull or unpolished words. When he tries to knock Greenberg, though, it's just absurd and he's out of his league. It's obvious Greenberg is a serious mind and Wolfe isn't.
IDLER: You�ve written favorably about Greenberg. Why?
COLLINGS: I like his grand style and I find him observant and accurate. He had his list of artists that gradually got shorter and shorter until only Jules Olitski was on it � who I like, too, actually. But in any case I always feel Greenberg believes what he�s writing and is careful not to talk rubbish, which is unusual in art writing.
IDLER: One of your cultural heroes is Bob Dylan, isn�t he?
COLLNGS: I think he�s very original and authentic � I don�t know exactly what it is. He never sings the same song twice. I mean he literally sings them differently every time. And he�s become a magnificent kind of Beckett-like nihilist in the last few years. He used to believe in causes and now he doesn�t believe in anything. He�s basically a Pop star, though � I accept the category. I just admire him, whatever he is.
IDLER: You also admire Andy Warhol, don�t you?
COLLINGS: Yes he was a very good writer, very clear, funny, a good describer.
IDLER: Do you stand on the inside looking out, or the outside looking in?
COLLINGS: Because of my background, my childhood and so on, which was very fraught and difficult, I felt like an outsider for a long time. Modern art was something civilizing for me. And also it was an escape from difficulty. Now I feel it�s a knowledge-system, it�s something that can be taken seriously � its history; its present moment. When I was young, though, I thought of art in general as rather a magic thing. Mainly because I could draw well and nobody else I knew could.
IDLER: Is painting dead?
COLLINGS: It�s only dead in the sense it's not part of society any more. But it�s not dead at all for anyone who�s actually doing it. That just means it has a special place, not a widely recognized place exactly. You have to keep making it up from scratch if you�re doing it. But it�s been like that for a long time hasn�t it? I prefer it to videos and installations, etc. � I can't imagine anyone preferring any other medium but weirdly they do.
IDLER: What do you really think of Norman Rockwell � you said �great!� when I asked you the other day on the e mail. What did you mean?
COLLINGS: I didn�t realize it was a serious question! Highbrows used to attack him for being schmaltzy and not being real art and they were right. He�s just schmaltzy fun.
It�s complicated nowadays because you�ve got Tracey Emin to compare him with, not Mark Rothko. I�m afraid I personally still find Emin more serious, though. She�s about modern desperate life whereas Rockwell is just sentimental. He�s slightly better than Balthus. Botero is better than Balthus. Botero is entertaining. Balthus is ridiculous. I mean, these artists are on the Rockwell level � or Andrew Wyeth. Emin is on a different plane altogether, a higher one.
IDLER: How do politics and art relate in Tony Blair�s Britain today?
COLLINGS: New Labour started out wanting to be identified with the category "Cool Brittania" -- successful British youth culture, TV, fashion, art, movies etc. But recently they became afraid of art's elitism. The other day the culture minister, Chris Smith, tried to distance the government from what he called "Conceptual" art -- referring mainly to Tracey Emin, who is currently the subject of a scandal. because of her exhibit "My Bed" in this year's Turner Prize. But it doesn�t matter what New Labour thinks about art because art has its own system.
IDLER: You just spoke at the Brooklyn Museum about �Sensation.� How does the scene in New York compare to London?
COLLINGS: London is better, at least for the moment. The virtue of �Sensation� is that, where it is coherent at all as an idea, it presents recent British art as, broadly, a return to a kind of British social realist tradition, but a return on up to date terms -- Hogarth in a world of video and installation art. That means a much shallower version of Hogarth than we might like, if we are intellectuals. But still more Hogarth than Bloomsbury. So that�s a good thing and I think that�s what people are really responding to with that show, underneath the pretend shock. New York is clean and safe now, much more than London. But �Sensation� � despite all the dull things it has in it, together with the bright things -- is a demonstration of how London is culturally much more alive than New York.
IDLER: And what about Paris?
COLLINGS: Paris is irrelevant. In terms of art it never recovered from fascism and WWII. Except for Yves Klein. But he�s the exception and that�s about it for Paris since the War. It�s not a controversial thing to say, everyone knows it.
IDLER: How was your talk received at the Brooklyn Museum of Art?
COLLINGS: It was healthy and normal. A few jokes, a few attempts at explaining. It�s not that I�m the ambassador for this art, or its apologist. Some older members of the audience supported Giuliani. He cleaned New York City�s streets of filth, they said, so for them he�s a good mayor. They see �Sensation� as the same sort of thing, because that�s how it�s been presented to them by the mayor. I don�t blame them. But �Sensation� is not really filth. Really you�d have to work quite hard to find it offensive in any meaningful way. I mean, ordinary people are finding it offensive because they�re suddenly getting a blast of modern art in a non-chocolate boxey, or else a non-sacred or pseudo hallowed, form. Which is something they haven�t encountered much before. But �Sensation� is no more offensive than a lot of other things that have been going on in art. Some people want to say it�s corrupt, that Saatchi is corrupt, the museum is corrupt to go along with him, that it�s all just wheeling and dealing. But that�s because their imaginations have that kind of cast! I don�t care if it�s corrupt or not. It�s not corrupt as art.
IDLER: How do you see the role of art today?
COLLINGS: Well, just to be itself, regardless. It�s got no other job really, has it? But it has become unexpectedly glamorous. Weirdly so, to me anyway, being the age I am � I never knew anything like that. In the last 10 years the artist has become more glamorous than a rock star or TV star or film star. There is nothing more glamorous -- except to be related to the Queen. But that�s a different kind of glamour. I know it�s a weakness to be impressed by glamorous things. It�s part of trivia. But trivia is part of life. I don�t know -- you can�t be serious all the time!
