Matthew Collings on an Art Crazy Nation

LONDON—Who better to identify as our newsmaker during Frieze week than that perennial London newsmaker (and our colleague) Matthew Collings? The well-known critic, a regular columnist for our sister publication Modern Painters, recently remade Sir Kenneth Clark’s celebrated television series Civilization (it airs in the U.K. next month), and curated “Picasso: L’Artiste, Le Modele et La Peinture,” on view at Helly Nahmad Gallery in London through February 15, 2008.

Collings’s first book, Blimey (1997), alerted the world to the YBAs (Young British Artists), and his first TV series, This is Modern Art, won him a BAFTA Award in the U.K. Further TV shows (including Art Crazy Nation) and books (including It Hurts: New York Art from Warhol to Now as well as companion volumes to his TV shows) have followed in quick succession. In addition, he presents British television’s coverage of the Turner Prize ceremonies, which—for good or ill—has linked him to the prize in the minds of the British public. Lately, however, Collings’s enthusiasm for contemporary art has waned, and he is often heard decrying its shortcomings in comparison to classical art.

In addition to working as a critic, Collings has always worked as an artist. He graduated with a BA from Byam Shaw School of Art and an MFA from Goldsmiths’ College, and for some time he has made collaborative paintings with his wife, Emma Biggs.

ARTINFO talked with Collings about the fairs, the “elite of zombiedom,” and the “mud monster” that is art.

Matthew, it’s Frieze week in London, when the international art world focuses its attention on London. Do you think it deserves it?

Frieze is a fun event on the cultural calendar like fashion week. We have a lot of art fashions here so we deserve the attention. 

Where do you think Frieze stands in relation to the other big art fairs, like Basel, Basel-Miami Beach, and the Armory Show?

They’re all the same, aren’t they?  

And where do you think the fairs stand in relation to the other international art gatherings, like Documenta and the Venice Biennale?

The others arrange the art in themes, whereas the art in fairs is random.

How do you feel about the fact that we’re comparing large-scale curated exhibitions with what are effectively large-scale shopping opportunities?

If you know something about the art, you can get something from it in both cases. On the other hand, the exhibitions are about shopping too, really. 

You’ve put a lot of time and energy into making contemporary art appeal to a wider audience. Do you feel you’ve had any success?

I am very sorry if I have. I hate contemporary art. I think the wider audience is more used to hearing about it than actually likes it. Most people don’t have any real interest in it. Contemporary art is a new habit for them. It’s on TV and in the papers, and people know some of the names; they want to be appalled and shocked and pretend to have an opinion and so on.

But if people want to get involved, I’d like to help them be more serious about it. They shouldn’t see art just as an exclusive club that has recently become inclusive as well—as if it’s somehow a triumph that anyone can partake in an elite of zombiedom now instead of just a few. 

Do you feel that this “wider audience” is invited to Frieze and the other London fairs this week?

No, I think it’s more for art pros. The wider audience gets the Frieze buzz or hell or whatever it is without actually going there, just as the public doesn’t actually go to fashion shows. 

Do you think they'd want to be at the fairs? 

No. They’d be bored unless they saw Orlando Bloom or Mick Jagger or someone, and then they’d be stimulated for a moment and then quickly bored again. Then again, that’s pretty much how I feel at these things. That’s the real difference with a fashion show. The models on the catwalk really are extraordinary sights. Something out of the ordinary really is happening. You can’t look away. 

You made your reputation with TV programs and books on modern and contemporary art, but more recently you’ve turned your attention to Matt's Old Masters, and now you've remade Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilization. It would seem that you really do hate contemporary art these days.

I know a lot about art and want to talk about it. But knowing about it isn’t the same as feeling you have to mindlessly support it and say the accepted things about it to show you’re in a creepy club, or that you can intimidate people who don’t know about it. That’s the theme of all my books and programs. The new series is about how we might understand “civilization” today (that is, if we think we’ve still got it). It goes from the Greeks to now, but it’s all from the perspective of now. The book that comes out of the series is more diaristic and confessional; it’s about my tragic parents and so on, what I thought yesterday, etc., as in Blimey. There’s also some stuff about Clark and the whole idea of TV arts programs. But the true focus of both the book and the TV series is the anxieties and uncertainties of art now, taking “art” as a kind of culture or constant, ongoing discussion, not just a collection of individual objects or shows.