STYLE vs CONTENT IN ART

Michael Meszaros 29 March 2010

A conversation with Geoff Williams about Faustus Sadauskas' exhibition last year has prompted some musings on the sculpture scene over the last few decades. Faustus' work demonstrated how a fresh mind can utilise traditional materials and techniques to express new ideas within what is now considered to be an old fashioned style.

The issue here is what is more important, idea or style?

Art commentators over the last 2 decades or more have concentrated almost exclusively on style, relegating idea and meaning to the almost unnecessary category. The need to be 'cutting edge', new, shocking or radical to be noticed by the commentators, to win prizes or commissions and have work acquired for official collections, has pushed artists into some pretty dubious and desperate areas. The philosophical pronouncements of Foucault have created a generation of philosophical slaves bound by their art school education and academic pressures to follow what is now artistic gospel, if they want to be noticed. Works that set out to understandably express a coherent idea derived from any subject material are discounted as populist, commercial or trite.

This contradicts my own understanding of what art is all about. I always thought that art is one of the last bastions of individual freedom where a person can express their thoughts, feelings and observations in whatever way they please with the aim of communicating their ideas to viewers.
The notion of fashion in art is a basic contradiction of this presumption, reducing it to the level of skirt lengths in women's fashion, which come and go each season. The fallacy there is that the clothing authorities think it is about skirts. Everybody else knows that it is about legs. In art, we should be concentrating on the legs. Let the skirts find their own lengths.

My own experience over 40 years in producing commissioned sculpture when working directly with clients has lead me to the conclusions that:-
1. Any design proposal needs a defensible logic for the client to see the point and to feel confident that he can sell the work to his public.

2. The style of the proposal is of far less relevance than the substance and relevance of the idea.

3. The style of the proposal grows out of the logic of the idea and its communication, the physical
requirements of the work's situation and the available budget.

4. Clients come to me for the approach for which I am known or which my past work demonstrates, rather than the expectation that I will do something in a current fad.

5. Clients who come to me dislike the notion of artistic fads and want something which will continue to have relevance after the fad has passed. They understand that a work in a passing fashion will rapidly become dated because of its style whereas a work with a strong logic done in a style which is relevant to the idea and application will continue to have relevance.
I have come to the conclusion that one of the basics of living as a sculptor has entailed keeping away from fashions and keeping to my own approach. This has brought me relatively little success in open competitions and expressions of interest, but it has kept me busy almost continuously for 40 years with commissions from clients who have sought me out. Sales have been made to buyers who are moved by my work for non-fashionable reasons.

The question every sculptor has to resolve in him or her self is: “How am I going to tackle these
apparently conflicting issues, while getting commissions and selling work, and remaining faithful to my own principles, at the same time”?.