At the tail end of last year, an artist called Peter Goodfellow mounted an exhibition of paintings titled Treason of the Scholars. The works were a garish parody of the signature styles of blue-chip artists including Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Joseph Beuys — not so much satire as aggravated assault. In terms of nuance, it made the giant inflatable butt plug artist Paul McCarthy had installed in Paris’s Place Vendôme in 2014 look subtle. But that, Goodfellow stressed, was precisely the point.
His complaint, he wrote in an accompanying essay, was that the ‘charlatans’ of the contemporary art establishment had come to neglect his medium in favour of figures possessed of ‘no ability, no technique, no intellectual gravity’. Conceptual art and everything associated with it was, apparently, ‘unadulterated hubris and self-indulgence’.
In many ways, Goodfellow’s is a persuasive argument. Indeed, I’d hazard a guess that even the most hoarse cheerleader for conceptual art might read his essay and, albeit secretly, acknowledge a flicker of truth.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in