Janet McAllister: Craving for Eye approval feeds artists into system

Young artists may have swallowed the bourgeois myth that the pinnacle of artistic possibility is impressing 'certain people'. Photo / Getty Images

I'll admit we were somewhat inebriated. At an impromptu after-party for a recent art opening I got talking to several 20-something "emerging" artists. They got down to art-world gossiping, as artists do. I got down to teasing.

What is the goal of an artist? I asked. To "make a name" for themselves, came the reply, which means getting "established" (like a business?), and then not getting "dropped".

The artists spoke strictly in metaphors; until I suggested it, they didn't admit to wanting sales or even dealers. And they only spoke about career, not why they initially started art-making.

Maybe it was to create things to give pleasure or to change the world, but they didn't say. It turns out that being established means receiving "critical acclaim". From whom? From important people, people with "The Eye".

You could see the capitals as the artists spoke. And here is a revelation: you cannot get The Eye from looking at artwork, or from art training or reading art theory. Instead, you either are born with The Eye or you are not.

In this genetically hierarchical Brave New World of art, the artistic overlords use their good Eyes to separate Good Art from bad.

I forgot to ask if there were any people born with The Eye who had not gone to university, or who did not act as gatekeepers to people who can afford to buy art.

Even if the artists had allowed that one could be trained into The Eye, I could have asked them why we have public galleries if only a tiny minority of ubermenschen can truly appreciate fine art.

Is Good Art good medicine for all, even if we don't have the officially approved faculty to identify it?

It was disturbing that these young artists have swallowed the bourgeois myth that the only pinnacle of artistic possibility is impressing certain people, and that this can only be achieved and funded by creating and selling unique objects.

Instead of giving them the critical tools to question this paradigm, and to participate consciously in it or create alternatives, their qualifications have fed them into the system, sharpening their ambition for success within it. The artist as petit bourgeois.

A few alternatives already exist. Hip-hop gives graffiti writers a completely different ethos, while three of the Walters Prize finalist works separate critical acclaim from commercial success by including no easily sold object.

A recent cheering AUT symposium discussed mostly state-funded, non-gallery ways for artists to "engage" with the public. John Radford's Graft - one "suburb" artwork with multiple owners - also breaks the mould: each of the 256 miniature villas is sold not by a dealer but by Radford's real estate agent alter ego Ron Jadford. Art is not just colour, shape and tonality, it is also how and where the object or performance is presented, and to whom. If the artist forgets this, they forget all of us in their frantic attempt to catch only The Eye.