Sold Out at the Tate

The contributing artists to Pop Life, the new show at the Tate Modern, clearly got their way in changing the show’s name from Sold Out and if it was Tracey and Damian et al who were responsible for the name change then they clearly lack a sense of humour and an appreciation of irony. Or did they, all along think their work was witty and wonderful
Pop Life is a trawl across the bottom of what became an ocean of egotism as various overpaid and creatively under-nourished patrons and aficionados handed out bucket loads of money for work which was very evidently mediocre and existed entirely on the back of the spurious claim that it might be, at least, satirising the excess.
Unfortunately there is something quite engaging about what is a historic commentary on the “getting away with it” years spanning the late 1980s to the early part of the millennium. One of the real achievers of that period was Jeff Koons who got away with it well and had it away with La Cicciolina and recorded it in a series of pictures which are execrable. The marble bust of Koons and Ilona Staller (La Cicciolina) is bloody awful. In one of last weekend’s papers a reviewer described Koons’ inflatable bunny as “horrifying yet inanely reflective”. With acolytes making remarks like that one understands how they got away with it for years. Koons went to art school but honed his trade as a Commodities Broker on Wall Street, went back into the studio and continued as a commodities broker. The Koons room at Pop Life bears an adults only warning. It should read “Adults Only if Accompanied by Children” so that children could see how utterly dim grown-ups can be
Damian and Tracey, with one or two other luninaries of YBA, have a section and oddly it ain’t bad as an historic representation of art and life in Blair’s Britain. Some artist’s probably deserve a more contemplative approach but in this environment it’s just a gig but a gig worth seeing.
The timing of the opening of Pop Life could not be better with Hirst having a Pauline experience and returning to painting and Tracy Emin hopefully bound for France with its more lenient tax system and intuitive recognition of great art. I can’t wait to see her alongside Carla Brunni and Nicolas Sarkozy;the kind of people that Tracy is used to and who will presumably inspire her to great works.
My favourite part of Pop Life was a corridor of porn recording a show at the ICA in the 1970s. Tate Modern has assiduously searched press archives for the righteous responses by various sections of the press and the Sun’s ironic 1976 assault on the Guardian for being purveyors of porn is a gem of Sun journalism.
Overall Pop Life is a good visit. But is it art? Nobody seemed to really care one way or another. Thankfully after this show at Tate Modern one only has to walk a very short distance to see Miro, Matisse, Monet, Rothko and Picasso – all for nothing. And the latter is somthing Ms Emin would do well to remember in this creatively barbarous society