Project 2 - Introduction - The Taste, Culture and Difference [Of Modern Society]

As an artist, it is essential to stay in touch with what is going on in the world around us. We are constantly looking at other human beings in order for ourselves to try and make sense of the world, even though, often we are looking at it through both fiction and reality.

In art, the use of the narrative is one of the most important tools that we use to carry a message or convey an idea, but also a kind of context; - that the work of art is being released into is equally important. As artists we make work for our immediate culture and for the viewers that exist today,  but we must also make it with an eye to what happening globally.

By examining contemporary culture and behaviour we are able to notice patterns of similarity, or the dissimilarity and overlaps of taste, status, class or culture , etc.  It is these that I must now pursue and attempt to delineate.

As humans, by looking at the small differences between each of us, we can codify or decode, or even assimilate information to help us understand both our "own place in the world" and our "choice of place" in the world.  We do this based on our ability to recognise groups or stereotypes and  particularities, both in every day immersion, in culture, but also the fictional or iconic culture which seems to be generated constantly to television with the idolisation of celebrities.

The ground breaking works in sociology studies by Andrew Meltzoff, in the United States, indicates that early perception and production of human action are closely linked by what he calls a supra-modal representation of action.  What this means is that babies copy their peers... It allows infants to see the behaviour of others and measure it with their own, in order to adapt and "belong" in a group.

The old saying birds of a feather flock together comes directly into my mind...

As humans develop from infant-hood to adult-hood, this behaviour continues.  Andrew Meltzoff calls this the "like me" behaviour framework.

In art, our narratives of the stories that go on around us, that we then try to pictorially imagine, are not necessarily about "events", 'appropriations' or records of other time periods.  These narratives can also be pushed into many other directions of conceptual thought altogether.  It is worth keeping this in mind.

In our briefing this morning I was reminded that

 Research is not what you already know, it is what you don't know, but you can find out about.

I need to re-research much of the work that I was interested in, during the late 1990s and early 2000s,  in both motivational psychology and sociology.  My management books from the old days are great references, even now... (I'm thinking of Abraham Maslow's theory of Hierarchical Needs in particular, written in the 1960s).

After observing some of the films created by Grayson Perry, I realise that anonymity is an interesting aspect of individuality. - That anonymity, by belonging to a crowd, provides security. The shoal effect...

As an example, I particularly recall a very tense moment of Kirk Douglas when he is about to step forward from the crowd and declare responsibility for his own individual actions in order to save the crowd, - but then, other people in the crowd shout "I'm Spartacus" and another, "I'm Spartacus", then another, "I'm Spartacus".   - They are all responsible and united.  They are all Spartacus!

Pride in belonging to a hereditary creed or tribal clan is still highly prevalent in today's society, particularly in the football and sporting, spectatorship.

I genuinely do not believe that crowd behaviour has changed in virtually any significant way since the times of the Roman centurions and Spartacus himself.

It occurs to me that the basic Maslow's "theory of hierarchical needs" behaviour, at second level in human behaviour within the pyramid, (which is that need of "belonging" to a society, group or family), is still as strong now in all humans, hence ALL CLASSES, as it was when humankind was emerging from the evolutionary Darwinian link to Chimpanzees. This basic Maslow's theory of needs, of belonging to a group, the United, both in defeat and or victory is wonderfully portrayed in British football.  So too, are the "labels" and "signposts" to class.  For example currently there is an upsurge in tattoo painting and hence tattoo parlours.  Even this has undergone a recent type of modernism and sophistication, as the images are no longer called tattoos, but more often referred to as body art. But it's a Working Class resurgence too.

When rationalising the concept of body art, again much of this can be seen to have emerged from historical fashions.  Ultimately the images are totems.

American artist Barnett Newton is creating abstract paintings based on heraldry and totems and one to spend some time reviewing.

I feel already energised in this project and I am looking forward to becoming, (as Grayson Perry puts it), part psychologist and part detective.  My job will be to undercover the fake identities, the alter ego's of modern life, and modern celebrity.  The issue of anonymity against a belief of individuality I suspect stands from an underlying, yet overwhelming insecurity.  This insecurity can never be shown, particularly in tribal environments, and yet it is the fundamental driver or so much of our own human behaviour.