The unmade bed works for me

Eyesores
and other
attractions IV
Elizabeth Harper defends modern art

'What a load of rubbish!'
'I could have done that!'
These are just a couple of remarks aimed at contemporary modern art. It's an easy target; after all it's visually arresting and often shocking in its content. However, I'm going to argue that contemporary modern art isn't a load of rubbish and instead has a valid right to exist and be appreciated.
     As I'm writing this, the annual Turner Prize is being exhibited and debated. The Turner Prize was set up in 1984 to stop contemporary art being baffling and excite exploration of new ways of seeing and thinking. However, the prize has instead become something of a national concern, attracting intense criticism and joking from the media. Spoof prizes and demonstrations are held annually declaring the prize is a mockery. In 2002 even Prince Charles wrote '...the dreaded Turner Prize...has contaminated the art establishment.'
     I agree the Turner Prize is controversial but only if you limit yourself to seeing art as purely pretty pictures. In our modern world anything that can still shock is rare and the prize shows the power of contemporary art that it can do this. The Turner Prize was named after a young artist heavily critiqued in his own day for his radical approach but now seen as one of the greatest British artists. If you look at nominees from the prize's history you'll find artists who are now considered great such as Gilbert and George, Antony Gormley, and Howard Hodgkin. Janet Street-Porter in 2006 wrote: 'The Turner Prize...entices thousands of young people into art galleries for the first time every year...and fulfils a valuable role'. I would argue the same.

Contemporary art has made art galleries accessible and no longer elitist places. Today looking at art is more popular than ever – just look at the success of Tate Modern or the Saatchi Gallery. But the audiences at such institutions often feel they could have easily have thought up a lot of the stuff themselves – it just has to be shocking, sexual or a bit pretentious.
     The reason is that modern art mocks and reflects modern life and all its faults and unpleasantness, so yes, some will be shocking and seemingly meaningless. This is a capitalist, consumerist, violent, over-sexualised, information-overloaded, science-led society and contemporary art tackles these issues – you just have to look. For instance Damien Hirst tackles consumerism and greed with his diamond-encrusted skull and science with his cabinets of pharmaceutical drugs.
     Contemporary artists are tackling contemporary issues, but also use contemporary media to express what they see around them just as prehistoric man used rocks and earth to paint what they saw and felt on the sides of caves. For some artists, using traditional media such as oil paint or marble, as aesthetically pleasing as they can be, aren't contemporary or intense enough to get an idea or emotion across as say a video or light installation would be. It would be anachronistic if Damien Hirst had painted a shark rather than to have placed one in a formaldehyde-filled tank. Artists should be limited only by their imaginations, not what are seen as the 'correct' media or subjects.
     Contemporary art has no boundaries – forget your preconception that art means sculpture or paintings. Art has been democratised and made accessible – art schools and galleries are open to all. Art no longer belongs to the privileged who can afford to be its patrons. Artists today can please themselves and make 'art for art's sake'. And why shouldn't artists explore the thoughts and feelings that make us human in any way they like?
     It's the limitless nature and lack of set ideas on taste for contemporary art that intimidates and divides people. The audience feels suspicious as if they're being fooled, but the artist is just exploring creative possibilities that someone, somewhere had to do. Just like a scientist seeks all possible solutions to a theory by research, debate and analysis, so contemporary artists explore the nature of being human by pushing limits, questioning rules and ideas of taste in the art they make. The remark that 'I could have made that' is probably true but why would you have?

However meaningless or shocking some contemporary art may seem, the tenets of western art are still there such as sex, death and money. Look at Emin's Unmade Bed – an artwork that many people say they could have done themselves – and you'll find in there sex, gluttony, notions of the naked female form, all of which are staples of western art. Look at Hirst's 'pickled' animals – meaningless perhaps at first glance but underlying them are the themes of life and death. There's nothing new, there's just a different way of exploring these long-standing themes. Emin's work seems like rubbish to some but exploring her work shows how it follows timeless themes in western art – she has just reinvented these ideas by using contemporary media in a confessional manner.
     You might not want it in your living room but this judgement doesn't make it rubbish. Art today doesn't have to be beautiful – it can simply provoke or amuse and it's this idea that many people, including art critics, find hard to grasp, especially when you've grown-up with notions of what art is and should be. Not all modern art of course is good, but neither is everything that's old. With the shock of the new comes an exaggerated and unrealistic reverence for everything past. What is needed when viewing modern art is an open mind, a lack of preconceptions about what art is and to just enjoy it – whether you're repulsed or exhilarated by it. Good art always provokes strong reactions and the British art-viewing public have for centuries loved spectacle and to be challenged. I love the way really good contemporary art shocks me into laughing or smiling, repositioning my views on a matter or heightening my sensory awareness. I might not want to take it home and put it on my wall but without it and its power to challenge and express creativity, contemporary society would be very bland and stifled of all creativity, innovation and daring.

Elizabeth Harper, a university archivist, delivered this paper at the recent Young Education Programme