Julian Stallabrass

“Quotes about Contemporary Art, by Julian Stallabrass”

“The question of art’s use takes us back, naturally, to art’s freedom. That the very concerns of art – creativity, enlightenment, criticality, self-criticism – are as instrumentally grounded as what they serve to conceal – business, state triage, and war – is the consideration that must be concealed. And it can be, because the local liberation offered in the production of art, and its enjoyment, are genuine.”

“Governments, as we have seen, look to art as a social salve, and hope that socially interactive art will act as bandaging for the grave wounds continually prised open by capital.”

“Art appears to stand outside this realm of rigid instrumentality, bureaucratized life, and its complementary mass culture. That it can do so is due to art’s peculiar economy, based on the manufacture of unique or rare artefacts, and its spurning of mechanical reproduction.”

“The economy functions strictly and instrumentally according to iron conventions, imposed unequally on nations by the great transnational economic bodies; it establishes hierarchies of wealth and power; it enforces on the vast majority of the world's inhabitants a timetabled and regulated working life, while consoling them with visions of cinematic lives given meaning through adventure and coherent narrative (in which heroes make their lives free precisely by breaking the rules), and with plaintive songs of rebellion or love...”

“The art market is regulated by dealers who control not only production but also consumption, vetting the suitability of buyers for particular works; the ‘who are you?’ question to buyers.”

“Paris, that great but compact cosmopolitan and imperial city, has a strong claim to be considered the cradle of street photography. The city helped form this genre of photography and, equally, photography contributed to the formation of the city, as Parisians saw first their buildings and then themselves reflected in the many photographic photographic portraits constructed in magazines and books.”