#MYLDN (890)

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

Now that is something I do understand.

This week’s photographs focus on unexplainable art I have recently ncountered on my travels through this city. The question is this: can art be art without meaning? Surely that is the requirement for it to qualify? But maybe the point of art is that it is indefinable. It slips through the cracks of our consciousness. We cannot always file it in our brains because it is unclassifiable.

I used to think that art was anything creative that was produced without the desire for financial returns. (That’s what I conveniently told myself anyway). Its existence was enough. It was free from the sullied hands of commerce and sought reward not in gold but in the human soul. In modern times, this is now very far from the reality for the Premiere league. Art is now one of the biggest commodities around and seems to be one of the few industries outside the city that is still raking in the cash.

As so many companies have been forced out of Soho because of extortionate rates the art world has moved  in. You only have to take a look at the square footage of the new Marion Goodman gallery off Golden Square to know that the art world is doing just fine. It makes you realise that this unquantifiable product of human expression, this abstract attempt to make sense of our world is obviously highly valued in today’s society. It is also apt that in these commodity driven times where everything is traded for middle men mark ups, even the industry devoted to the purist of intention has had its culturally enriching credits transformed into stock value and been rebranded as a luxury status symbol for the superrich.

The market worth of the art world does however show how important it is still regarded in society and how  much we must want it and need it and as soon many other areas fail to give us a sense of understanding of ourselves and the world around us, we turn to art, because it is in these fleeting moments of artistic appreciation and induced reflection that we get a brief calmness that allows us to feel like there is a purpose to it all. This is possibly incorrect and an inspired lie but it’s soothing nonetheless.