What makes good art? I’m struggling with this one as I look up at the works of Sylvia Sleigh and just don’t get it.
There was quite a build up to this exhibition, as we were promised ‘ a realist painter who became an important part of New York’s feminist art scene in the 1960s and beyond. She was particularly well-known for her explicit paintings of male nudes, which challenged the art historical tradition of male artists painting female subjects as objects of desire’. Sounds great…and the images that accompanied the text were quite impressive.
We were given research time to read up about the exhibition, as well as a briefing by one of the curators. Great, fabulous – we were all looking forward to this.
…and then the work arrived.
I thought something was amiss when I heard the art handlers sniggering away as they hung the work. It wasn’t good in ‘real life’ and I’m not alone in thinking that way. There are constant debates in the staff room over her work – the inability to paint features, the use of colour, of light and the way the work is framed. Even the fact that the whole exhibition is hung in a salon style makes it looks the more amateurish. If there were any feminist issues within the work, they were deeply buried between the floral patterns and bizarre use of shadow on the fluffy images of women.
How can there be such a contrast between what is written and the actual work? It really is a difficult one when we have to talk to the public about works of art on display. What do you do when you can’t categorise something? You can’t explain it off as naivety as you may for other artists, it’s not a particular style – a flatness that can be compared to others. It’s just cringe worthily bad! ( sorry Sylvia!!)
It is such a challenge when we are expected to respond to ‘my son/daughter can do that’ etc etc . Usually we can come up with an answer – but with this one…… I can’t help feeling it’s very much an emperor’s clothes syndrome.
Her work cannot possibly be on display because of her connections can it? Surely not.
This really has made me think hard about artist statements!
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/sylvia-sleigh
