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.

I understand that you are also a painter.

Until I went to art school at 19 I always thought that painting and drawing, etc., was something I did quite naturally, that people admired me for it, and that I’d always be saved by it. I thought my talent would provide me with a living. However, it turned out that as an adult I had to make a living working as a critic. For 20 years I convinced myself that I did this other activity, being a writer, in order to pay for my studio and materials. Then I finally had to admit my writing had developed and matured over the years while my painting was mostly mud. 

Ten years ago I began an artistic collaboration with my wife, who is a professional mosaicist. We started turning out abstract paintings. She has a very developed eye for color relationships and is a tough arranger of forms. She thinks up the shapes and colors and I paint them. It seems to work OK. We found a gallery to take us on and now we sell our paintings.

Why couldn’t I do this on my own? I don’t know. It’s not that art doesn’t mean a lot to me. It does. But not in a way that means I can paint successfully on my own. Not in a way that makes me an artist. It’s very painful to admit this. I wish I could say it’s liberating at the same time, but I’m afraid I actually find it disappointing and feel angry about it. I still fantasize about branching out on my own one day. I sometimes try it. It never works. My wife will be working on a mosaic commission for Cherie Blair or Posh Spice, or a museum somewhere—I go in the studio full of energy, the honeymoon is delicious for a few days, but then the rows start. They are with art: “Why won’t you come? Why do you hold back? What’s so special about you? Who are you saving yourself for? I hate you, you mud monster! Why did you lure me back here with your siren song? Cursed world of profundity and depth—why did I ever fall for you?”

This is a true story but it has elements of myth, that is, truth that is beyond mere facts. The main myth of course is art itself, this capital-A world of high ideals, a bit like religion. Another mythic element is the artist, a being accidentally elevated beyond the norm, in touch with a certain mystic goo as rare as gold—What the hell is it? Talent—the third mythic element. It’s a marvelous substance, the possession of which solves the riddle of existence: Why was I born at all? 

Is Britain still an “Art Crazy Nation?”

Yes, it’s the same as everywhere else in the makeup of the art scene, but different in that there’s a huge popular audience that wants to see sensational stuff about art in the media all the time. But it’s painful for me to remember that book, because the pages fall out. I pick it up at a bookstore and the pages really do start falling out—like your teeth falling out in a bad dream. The next book is going to be printed by a different firm and it’s going to be much tougher!