{"id":13454,"date":"2021-05-15T06:15:51","date_gmt":"2021-05-15T06:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=13454"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","slug":"memeification-of-the-metro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2021\/05\/memeification-of-the-metro\/","title":{"rendered":"Memeification of the Metro"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Mayor of London has just unveiled new artwork (via Twitter) by David Hockney, which consists of a Microsoft Paint redesign of the Piccadilly Circus underground station signage and features in the digital advertisement displays.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sadiq Khan describes the image in his\u00a0tweet<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cbrilliant work\u201d and \u201cthe first in a series of major art projects we\u2019ve commissioned\u201d, indicating that there will be more visual insults to follow. The piece is a part of the #LetsDoLondon campaign, which aims to encourage engagement with the arts in the lead up to gallery re-openings in the next few weeks. If you consider a quote tweet outrage \u201cratio\u201d as a legitimate form of public engagement, the campaign is an immediate \u2014 albeit cynical \u2014 success.<\/p>\n

Computer drawing<\/a>\u00a0is typical of Hockney\u2019s newer work, which is similarly naive in style, but much more interesting than this latest commission (although still a long way from\u00a0A Bigger Splash<\/a><\/em>). The Piccadilly sign, however, is deliberately bad, with little to redeem it conceptually. Hockney\u2019s ability to pass this off in the context of fine art is almost entirely due to his past success and reputation. It\u2019s the kind of elitist statement that rescues failed experimentation from the paper bin (or \u201crecently deleted\u201d folder) and forces the viewer to deny the evidence of their own eyes and join the art world and its enablers in nodding approvingly over the emperors\u2019 new clothes. The misplaced \u201cS\u201d is a statement masquerading as a mistake: there is clearly enough room on the above line, but the point is to indicate that the artist has f***** up the letter spacing and\u00a0yet!\u00a0<\/em>it\u2019s still worthy of a major public commission.<\/p>\n

\n

Oh, contemporary art, how you challenge me! Only, we\u2019ve been having the conversation on the boundaries of art for about a century now, and the average person doesn\u2019t want to be reminded of the postmodern quest to destroy all beauty and shared meaning on their commute to work.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cynical culture<\/h2>\n

This bourgeois conversation starter is particularly insulting in the\u00a0current context<\/a>\u00a0of the pandemic and the huge increase in poverty and unemployment. The \u201c#LetsDoLondon\u201d campaign is aimed towards reviving the arts and entertainment sector after having been\u00a0devastated<\/a>\u00a0over the past year by lockdown measures (although this art is enough to make the public want to #StayAtHome). To make matters worse, the UK government is now pursuing a \u201ccatastrophic<\/a>\u201d 50% cut to higher education arts funding, effective from autumn this year. Both inside and outside of the art world, those allocating the funds see the profession as unserious. At the top, high-paid, high-exposure commissions for gimmicky statement pieces; at the bottom \u2014 well, have you considered\u00a0a job in cyber<\/a>?<\/p>\n

In his announcement tweet, Khan has made sure to repeat the artist\u2019s name in a \u201chashtag\u201d to remind the viewer \u2014 whose offence is anticipated \u2014 that this is a cultural product from someone taken seriously by the establishment. Failure to \u201cget\u201d the work or question its craftsmanship is an admission of ignorance and we need look no further than the replies to see the names of the uninitiated. Those commenting \u201cdid a child do this?\u201d are falling into the trap. The artist has intended to challenge the \u201cpreconceptions\u201d of the audience.<\/p>\n

The postmodernist\u2019s will is bully-like in its relentless desire to destroy any sense of acceptable standards or reasonable expectations in the psyche of their victims. Responses of \u201cI could have done this\u201d or demonstrations of such through\u00a0parody versions<\/a>\u00a0bring to mind the\u00a0scene<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0We Go to the Gallery: A Dung Beetle Learning Guide<\/em>, in which the mother responds to the same statement from her child with a smug, \u201cbut you didn\u2019t\u201d. There really is no way to engage without having the conversation the artist and commissioner intended you to have because the intention is the conversation. Look what we made without you, with your taxes, that you\u2019re now forced to discuss.<\/p>\n

Until recently, the streets of London were boarded up and deserted \u2014 a stark visual reminder of the harsh reality of the past year for ordinary people. Now, with the re-opening of society, the public are faced with work that holds the experience of the viewer in disdain and furthers their alienation and disengagement from the arts. William Morris once described art as \u201cthe expression by man of pleasure in his labour.\u201d Hockney\u2019s public installation communicates the pleasure of the artist and establishment in precisely the opposite. The\u00a0memeification<\/a>\u00a0of the metro is an in-joke, and it\u2019s the British public who are being trolled.<\/p>\n

First published on the author’s site<\/a>\u00a0and reproduced with permission<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured image via Mayor of London’s Twitter post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It\u2019s the kind of elitist statement that rescues failed experimentation from the paper bin (or \u201crecently deleted\u201d folder) and forces the viewer to deny the evidence of their own eyes and join the art world and its enablers in nodding approvingly over the emperors\u2019 new clothes.” In her first post here a young artist comments on a Tube makeover…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":13458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[80,547],"class_list":["post-13454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-art","tag-modernism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18576,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454\/revisions\/18576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}