FALSE ICONS AND VIDEO ' ART.'

In times such as these with some momentous changes taking place in the Middle East and this country entering what I believe will be a period that will severely test social cohesion and consensus, this may seem a trivial subject. However, as examples of how deracinated and insubstantial a large part of our culture has become and the deluded nature of much so-called critical commentary has become it takes some beating.

I am speaking of the confusing hyperbole spoken around films and video, particularly when it is presenting itself as art. Quite simply I suggest that much of what goes under the name of mixed media art is very close to worthless and the writing about it simply contrives and confuses without making any real case for giving it prominence or attention.

An example. A current exhibition at the Barbican consists of a batch of video games being projected at a huge scale onto the walls of the gallery. It is momentarily diverting as a spectacle. Yet it offers nothing, other than this momentary diversion : it is what it is, no more, no less. There is no attempt to create a narrative, a deliberate lack of aesthetic qualities, almost no evidence of a human involvement at all. No matter how much verbiage is written around it about 'subverting the media' and so on, it remains, as do 99% of these sorts of installations, as vacuous and dispiriting as the thing it is supposed to be 'subverting.' That this might be the point of this sort of production does not mean it justifies being taken seriously nor being treated as a work of art. I do not accept such claims. It is a slightly clever but empty gesture.

Onto another unrelated but highly irritating and now quite absurdly overused word which once had a clear meaning but is now totally demeaned by persistent misuse, the term icon. Recently deceased film stars are now explicitly called 'icons.' The BBC report of Elizabeth Taylor's death made a point of saying that she was ' not a film star but an icon. ' No she wasn't, she was a film star. Well known buildings, for example the Houses of Parliament, are referred to as ' icons.' Again they are surely well-known buildings not icons. An icon is an image created for religious contemplation, a visual expression of a spiritual intention. It is the very opposite of something familiar through mechanical repetition. A famous actress that is familiar through having their image widely disseminated is not an icon. Neither is a building that has become a landmark.

It is perhaps yet another example of the perverted and strange relation that this country has to the visual arts that may originate in the destruction of the religious orders in the reformation and the real icons and images that enriched the Catholic church. Oddly this is commonly called the ' dissolution of the monasteries.' State sanctioned vandalism of the most grotesque order is more like it.