Modern Art Cabbies

Bringing Art to the Masses or Innovative Marketing Strategy?

In 2007 two of Liverpool’s cabbies were given the task of driving around the "Capital of Culture" charged with 'gabbing' about the 2007 Turner Prize with their customers.

Tate Liverpool’s Taxi Project, initiated in June 2007, gave taxi drivers intensive courses in contemporary art, the history of the Turner Prize and the exhibit’s controversies. The conversations were screened alongside the Prize nominations, with the Tate’s hope that they "offer a snap shot of opinion and feeling in the city about the Prize and about art and life in general."

But is the project really an attempt to bring art to the masses? Or is it part and parcel with a larger marketing strategy and a growing tendency to employ "casual advertisers" who infiltrate social gatherings and put their gift of gab to use on behalf of commercial companies. (Recall the controversies over

student product promoters on American university campuses, who are paid to strike up conversations with their fellow students about the newest Apple computer or the health benefits of various soft drinks).

The Taxi Project and the 2007 Turner Prize was sponsored by

Metquarter", "Liverpool’s premier shopping destination. With 40 top stores…[it] is home to leading fashion and lifestyle brands including M.A.C, BOSS Hugo Boss and Flannels" and by Arts & Business, an independent organisation which has recognized "the importance of brand building [and] innovation" and helps companies achieve their objectives by developing unique connections between business and the arts.

So, when art is commodity, and when art exhibitions have eager corporate sponsors, can art education be separated from marketing?

Related:

The Times on the taxi-driving Tate promoters Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture"Do corporate sponsorships compromise theatres?" in The Guardian

What do you say?

Modern art without PR

Art of the PR consultant
What is it with modern artists? Around 100 years ago - painters such as van Gogh went unrepresented by agents and PR people, and as a result their work would stand or fall on its artistic merit.

Today most artists prefer to attach an attitude or a marketing ploy to their art.

One such artist, a conceptualist called Tino Sehgal, in 2006, hit on an idea that had particular resonance for the PR industry. The artist decreed - to ICA curators - that no physical objects should be used in the marketing of his show. No press release, pack of press cuttings or photography available to journalists, leaving PROs with a huge challenge. How exactly are you supposed to whip up hype for a show when you can't write a press release or send out invitations to a launch event? Tino’s concept is interesting because it forces us to consider our core function as PR people.

Most of the major PR agencies in the UK construct their business around writing strategies, drawing up Q&As, drafting statements, collating briefing, printing press kits and countless other bits of waffle. This process gets charged to clients, who have been told that these are necessary building blocks in the delivery of a ‘great’ PR launch.
Get rid of all this stuff and you would demolish half the industry at a single sweep.

If you were to reduce the role of the PR consultant to its most basic function what do you have?

Have modern British artists run out of ideas?

Huge levels of 'art culture' and commercial imagery, especially available in advertising, has permanently changed the way art and images are created and received by the public today.

With the lines between advertising and art as blurred as they’ve ever been - with art borrowing from advertising and advertising borrowing from art. This effect is strikingly present in the work of Damien Hirst and other modern British artists. But have modern British artists run out of ideas? Falling back on repeating established clichés that trade on branding and shock tactics.

What do you think? Pics above (first pic) of Damien Hirst's 'spastic society box' and (second pic) a genuine charity fundraising box, raising money for Guide Dogs

Spin and bling as art

We live in a age of PR spin, with the art world dominated by promotional PR activity. Through the media our reality is created. Today's artists who can successfully use the media to their advantage, can shape reality and achieve huge wealth and power...

In an interview, with David Cohen, for the London Evening Standard in 2007 Damien Hirst said: "Art is only worth what people will pay for it." In the same interview a friend of Hirst's, said: "It's like this great illusion getting bigger and bigger. It's soaring in value, but really it's the emperor's new clothes. You've got to hand it to Hirst, though. He is a fantastic showman, a great advertising man, full of bravado"

Read more at www.thisislondon.co.uk

Audacious artist or expert self publicist?

This blog aims to debate whether Damien Hirst is a genuine artist or someone who is massively successful at keeping himself visible, and manipulating the media and art world -

Hirst's glittering 8,601 diamond encrusted skull sold for a staggering £50m in 2007, but what are the criteria for deciding the worth and artistic value of a work of art today?

Skill? Intelligence? Wit? Inspiration? Wealth?

Look anywhere in our 'modern' news media and you'll find much discussion about Hirst's work and the state of the contemporary art market. With critics complaining "it is no longer about art - but how you can manipulate the market and push up prices".

If ever there was a work of art that focused the mind on the virtues of art versus PR and spin, Hirst's £50m skull is it!

Be part of the debate here by pasting your views or taking part in the online poll, on your left, today.

Hirst on himself...

All great artists have produced overrated and over indulged work, but surely none have made as many Damien Hirst?

Responding to critics in 2005, Hirst said of himself and his work: "Some of my creations have been silly and embarrassing. Certainly everything you make is not a masterpiece," he said. But he believed some of his work would still be displayed in 200 years.

Ben Lewis, writing for Prospect Magazine assesses the case against Hirst here:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9656

Hirst: You Tube

Damien Hirst - You Tube - artist or fraudster ? ?

Watch this short film about Damien Hirst ripping-off the diamond skull idea from DJ Boys Noize