Aside from the lavishly unhealthy expectations I acquired about romantic love from repeated viewings of Disney cartoons, one of the most important lessons that stayed with me from children’s stories was that of the Emperor’s New Clothes. The details change from version to version but the lesson that communal delusion is a clear and present danger is the crux of the story. I think it stuck with me because it so accurately captures that demon inside all of us – the one that constantly makes us feel like we are the only ones left out of a giant joke that the world is laughing at together. You hear the voice as a school kid when everyone else seems to have better grades and more friends than you; you hear it at college when everyone is thinner and having more fun than you; and you definitely hear it throughout adult life, where literally everyone has more money, a better job, a prettier spouse and nicer shoes than you.
The only good thing about this demonic voice is that everyone hears it. Everyone feels like they are the only ones who are not in on the joke. Take jobs, for example. I always imagined that one day I would wake up and finally just “be” an adult and know what I am doing with my career and life. That somehow a fairy (or other equally fabulous figure) was going to sprinkle some dust on me and lift the veil of fear and doubt from my life, revealing a sparkly yellow brick road headed to a stunning future. No one mentions nearly enough how much BS that sentiment actually is. No one knows what they are doing, jobs are mostly returning emails until you can leave and nearly everyone is faking it. CEOs, parents, teachers, writers, artists, actors. Literally everyone.
There is a little secret that they don't tell you about contemporary art: it's about the money
I’ve thought about the idea of pretending a lot over the years, especially when I am looking at contemporary art. I’d look at, say, a mound of dirt on the floor with five turds sticking out of it that has been lauded as one of today’s definitive responses to the existential threat of modern technology and think to myself: “Am I the only one who doesn’t get it?” The thing is that I get really pissed off when that happens to me, because I’ve spent most of my life studying or learning about art and after all that time when I enter a contemporary art gallery or museum, 90% of the time I think that the world would be a better place if they just set fire to the place (unless, of course, the piece is already on fire, in which case my job there is done).
Most people don’t like to call out bad art for what it is because by its very definition, it is subjective. I agree, it is subjective. But I went to the New Museum recently to a show about Gender and Politics and found, like I always do when I go to the New Museum, that I became very angry indeed. I went with friends from art school and they were gushing over pieces, saying how “transformative” the works are or how “brave” the artist is for putting them up.
We were looking at a sweater knitted in the shape of flattened raccoon hung on a mirror. Transformative? No. A reflective raccoon is not transformative, especially when it is so willfully tangential to the theme of the show. Brave? Sure. I’ll give them that. It takes a brave person to put crap that awful in a museum and then willingly sign their name next to it. We argued about it, which is, I suppose, the point – but the awful reviews I read in the newspapers later supported my initial revulsion.
Amin Gulgee (left) and his team for the Karachi Biennale
I focus here on contemporary art because the recent decades have made it so that a gallery presents the current work of an artist under the guise of art history, as if the importance of perspective had already been conferred on the raccoon. The raccoon is not already historical. That’s important to say, especially to people who are not directly connected to the “Art World”. There is a little secret that they don’t tell you about contemporary art: it’s about the money. It’s about which artists are being bought, or traded on the auction block, or included in private and public collections. It’s not purely about ideas, because no commercial venture truly can be. And rest assured that ticket-charging contemporary museums and galleries in general are just that: commercial enterprises.
The second secret about the art world is that it is based on exclusivity. It is extremely elitist, because that’s how demand-and-supply works. I don’t mean to sound needlessly cynical about this, because I do and have always believed in the transformational power of art. I am simply pointing out that most art made today is referring constantly to art made before, and the self-referencing can sometimes cause people not familiar with all of it to questions whether they are just too dumb to get the work. You’re not too dumb. I’ve studied Art History my whole life and even I don’t understand most of what comes out. That’s not OK, it shouldn’t be that obtuse. Going to places like the New Museum makes me, too, feel inadequate, until I remind myself that with places like that the importance that is conferred on the painting/sculpture/projection/raccoon is still debatable. And it’s OK to disagree with it if it doesn’t speak to you. Sometimes you don’t get a work – not because you are too dumb, but because it is.
Pleasingly, I rarely feel this way about contemporary Pakistani art, which I think is among the most thrilling things in the world to behold. It is raw, edgy, smart and engaged. For the most part we don’t see nearly enough of it in public, despite the success of our artists globally. That’s only one of the reasons that I was so pleased to read about the amazing success of the Karachi Biennale, about which I have heard only good things. So I want to thank its lead organiser, the artist Amin Gulgee, for proving that when it comes to contemporary art, some emperors really do wear clothes.
