Art is Magic (2023)
240pp, Non fiction
Notes
2024-06-30
When I first encountered Jeremy Deller's art in the early 2000s I didn't like it. A real knee-jerk reaction - I just took an instant dislike to the "acid house - brass bands diagram". At the time, as someone whos late teens a few year earlier had involved clubs in Manchester and the North West, dancing to acid house and techno ... the connection between the industrial decline and the liberationary nature of the the music seemed obvious (the clubs were iterally housed in old industiral buildings in what were then zones of discard, anyone stopping for a moment might have made the connection). At the time the piece felt like someone outside the scene taking it and putting it in a gallery for people to gawp at. Over the years though I've come to appreciate his work more, I've performed a full 180 on the "brass bands - acid house" piece. With some distance provided by time and age I understand how it's seeking to move the discussion of that music away from drugs and hedonism, seeing whole scene not as a rupture but a continuation, tieing it in to the cultural fabric.
Anyway, this is a fab book, really breezy. Deller's simple and honest descriptions of his works, how they came about, what he intends to communicate and how they succeed and fail, are about the best thing you could hope for from a conceptual artist, there's just no bullshit, insread a sense of earnest playfulness coupled with a social concience runs through the whole thing from the Battle of Orgreave re-enactment, to the film about acid house.