" ur attitudes toward art are still as rigid as they ever were. We reverence art as something sacred, when we ought to be using it for our enjoyment as we do today with our clothes. Modern art hasn't succeeded in liberating us from Art with a capital A."  - Mary McCarthy

Says Mary in a twilight novel on hijacking fine art. (In the pulpy novel, "Cannibals and Missionaries" the terrorists asume that to the state art is worth even more than hostage's life and in the end blow up a load of Old Masters). It reads like a marxist desaster movie script, but has interesting thoughts on my hobby horse: dysfunctional art, a bit like wonderful Dave Hickey's views, and very No-Future 1979 cynical. Grabbed it because it fits the esssay i'm working on. I'm looking for more examples of proto-Club-artists, by the way. The essay's bibliography & updates can be found under club-art. Here goes:

Introduction
Berlin's special situation allows for exciting new un-academic art forms. Despite recession, (or because?) independent Club-arts can develop that make art enjoyable again.

Art & Music: Club-art's Development
Club-art has accompanied the development of electronic music for quite some time already. "Club-art" means art forms that are being used in a club context, as well as "fine art" that is inspired by disco culture and electronic music.
    The identification of visual artists with music, and the adapting of its vocabulary in art, is by no means new. In any artist generation there are many wanting to break out of the stuffy confines of the art world, and benefit from the proximity to another, cooler, (sub)culture.
    The psychedelic era of the 60's and 70's on the U.S. East coast gave us Club-art as it is most widely recognized today, as "visuals", but experiments combining visual art and music have been numerous, starting maybe with the Victorian light organs craze around 1900.
    Mondriaan related his canvasses to jazz, and he definitely wasn't the last or the first to "paint music". The futurists wanted to make "noisy" art, and many other visual artists from the 30's were also intrigued by themes that were more related to the musical than the visual: "movement", "time", "dynamic" or "the 4th dimension" were buzzwords of their day.
    In Great Britain's swinging 60's the recently re-discovered German Fluxus artist Gustav Metzger showed his liquid crystal projections at rock concerts of the Who and Pink Floyd. Andy Warhol made a multi media excursion into Psychedelica at the same time, with his "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" happenings/parties in NY.
   Later, in the cooled down late 70's/early 80's Steve Mass invited artists to set up elaborate art installations and performances in his New York City "Mudd Club", giving young artists like Keith Haring and Basquiat a first platform. This example was followed by many larger NY clubs subsequently. At the same time, German figurative painters, like Kippenberger (who ran a punk concert hall) or the Oehlen brothers, emulated punk attitudes in their work. Painters Salomé and Fetting sometimes presented their art in clubs as well, or had nightclubby music playing as part of museum presentations.

Making Art Work
The special situation in Berlin after the fall of the wall in 1989 nourished a veritable Club-art boom, with many artists showing their work in clubs. Much of this art adopts not a psychedelic, but a playful, some would say "infantilist" style.     This boom developed out of diverse circumstances: the 90's art market crash forced artists to think up new ways to find an audience, Eastern Berlin supplied much adventurous empty space, and finally, the enthusiasm for electronic music made artist eager to compare their art and its workings to DJ-culture. -Artists were becoming jealous of DJ's and their easy popularity.
   This generation of un-academic, "borderground" artists has created the image of Berlin as an exciting art capital in the last decade, as it is being propagated on a world wide scale today. They set up art collectives, art spaces, opened clubs or were involved in an artistic service industry that sprang up alongside clubs: projections, installation, murals, club fashion, graphic design, 3D-animation and VJ-ing. A more business like, self reliant artist type emerged, making the spiritually rewarding experience of functioning socially, beyond the boundaries of the art world.
    Like other, historical art movements as Constructivism and Pop Art, these Club-art forms are so alive because they are part of a broader movement in society. All three movements owe their energy to a mellowing or breakdown of authoritarian power, followed by excitement and a new sense of possibility. The old theme of separation and hostility between the world of art and the world of everyday life seems resolved here. After all: to be a part of things was normal for artists all through the ages, -there used to be no secluded "art world", only thé world. Experience sadly lost for today's mostly dysfunctional academic artists, and not replaceable by any amount of subsidy.

Political Aspects
There's a political dimension to celebrating art in this way too. Compared to presenting art in the elitist "White Cube", showing it in the club's more democratic "Black Box" helps it to reach a much larger audience from all walks of life, often giving young people a first, positive art experience.
    New social, temporary art spaces developed in Berlin, hybrids between lounge and gallery, where the dividing line between art producer and art consumer is blurred. Art as a shared experience is of greater value here than art as status object or investment. Maybe Club-art can be seen as a contemporary evolution of the original Pop-art philosophy with different means. And while other subcultural art scenes, like graffiti, remain macho and sexually exclusive, Club-art offers a non-sexist platform for girlie, queer or transgender expressions. 

..and This Is Now
Today, as the "artist as DJ" concept is maturing and evolving, it is a relief when visual artists (or writers) don't refer to "samples", "re-mixes", or "rhythm" for once when describing their work. The music analogy has become just one self-image among many to chose from for young artists today. In tune with the 80's revival, a darker image of the "artist as heroic street-outlaw" is striking (boys') fancies in a big way too, with adbusting, street memes and such. But that's another fantasy I mean story.

I might file this under: essays

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