“JAYSUS. Is that a nipple?” As I’m trying to work out whether we can get away with “nipple” on the BBC, I nod at the man I’ve thrust a microphone under the nose of, writes LAURA BROWN.
Yes, I explain, it’s an artwork by Yoko Ono called My Mommy is Beautiful, stretching along Church Street like flags with various pictures of female anatomy (FYI “nipple” you can say on air, the producers were a bit worried about “vagina”, though).
He nods thoughtfully. “Do you like it?” I ask him.
“Oh aye, yeah. It’s good isn’t it. Makes you think, like. People make such a big deal but it’s just bodies, isn’t it?”
Yoko Ono is, possibly, one of the most avant-garde contemporary artists to have exhibited in the UK. This bloke, who says he rarely goes to galleries, is talking to me about visual art and performance with the confidence of the Director of Tate.
And that, largely, was the point. Liverpool Biennial has always had a strong persuasion for art in the public realm, a strand of the festival designed for people who don’t really “do” art to see it, mull over it, dissect it and have an opinion on it.
Free public art is important, not because it is free but because it is accessible. In Liverpool we are well versed on this. From giants to red houses on the waterfront, makeshift hotels outside the law courts and brazilian parades through the city’s streets we are used to this cultural identity of art spilling into our daily lives. Art in Liverpool is not for posh people who rattle their jewellery. It is for everyone.
This doesn’t just make us more confident to share view on the relevant merits of Ai Wei Wei over Louise Bourgeois. There is an argument it makes us healthier. Alex Coulter, who’s the Director of the arts advocacy organisation Arts & Health in the South West says: “(Public art) can have a very powerful impact on people’s sense of identity and locality.”
It is linked to who we are and how we see ourselves.
We all know the naked man above Lewis’ (Jacob Epstein’s Liverpool Resurgent) and we’re used to giving directions via bits of artwork (“Nah, lad, it’s down by Penelope, the coloured balls. Go past them you’ve gone too far”).
Clive Parkinson is the director of Arts for Health at Manchester Met University. He says: “Street festivals, where people take to the streets and witness giant spiders walking across buildings or dancing elephants, have a profound effect on people’s health and wellbeing [by] building a sense of community and addressing issues such as isolation … As we seem divorced from any sense of community, we’re increasingly isolated, so public art and public engagement is a vehicle for bringing people together.”
This shared experience is part of who we are. Like the family stories we tell each other over and over again, or the nights out we cry laughing over when we see a particular set of mates, shared memory is closely linked with community.
It is our foundation, our bedrock. There’s a video of Royal de Luxe (them of the Giants) showing their first street performance in the UK, The Sultan’s Elephant in London. It’s profoundly moving. This quite weird performance art, traditionally in a theatre or behind a closed door, spills on to the street and everyone is involved. Art is brought directly to the people and they respond with rapture.
What, you are quite rightly asking, does this have to do with football?
Yes, there is a cultural connection but football isn’t going to be free, is it? Also football is quite easy, isn’t it? Art is complex? No, let me rephrase that, art is not complex, art is often dressed in clothes that are complex. It’s framed in a language that is not accessible whereas football is dressed up as the wallpaper of our everyday.
Accessibility is at the heart of this.
I worked at an arts organisation where the galleries were very dark. There was a fear of walking into this dark space, of crossing the threshold into something unknown. This wasn’t a fear of the dark but of seeing something also you wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t be able to respond to.
The language, the “difficult” art, made the threshold into a doorway and something different: It became a barrier saying “this might not be for me”. It takes confidence to hear that voice in your head, to ignore it and step over the threshold. Much of the work in arts and cultural over the past two decades has been to breakdown those thresholds, to make it much easier to see art and talk about it, to physically remove the barrier.
Football, like culture, is part of our shared experience. But psychologically, if we feel we can’t afford something we are going to develop a threshold phobia. We’re going to feel it isn’t for us.
If Anfield, for example, becomes a space young people believe is for travelling fans, for wealthy tourists and not for “the likes of us” how will that affect our community and shared identity? It’s at the heart of this continuing debate we have about who is a proper fan. We’re grasping for our narrative back, for the ritual, the tradition, for the shared memory we all have of going the game with our old fella. That is what we feel we are losing.
The ritual of matchday is a bedrock. It taught us how to behave, how to defer to your elders, you saw your progression — your life — from holding your dad’s hand to being a gobby teenager, to grown up on the stands to old fellas ourselves. The storyline has been interrupted. When we swallow a lump when we hear You’ll Never Walk Alone it is often for the people we miss; the dad’s not there, the uncles, aunts, cousins, friends who have died and were part of our story. That is community.
And that’s what we’re losing.
There aren’t a lot of spotty teenagers in the stands at Anfield. We’re turning into a city where we’re more likely to see contemporary art for free on the streets than be able to afford to see our team play at home regularly.
And as much as the art is important, that just seems baffling to me. Anfield can’t become a threshold we feel we can’t cross. It can’t become a place we don’t feel we can be part of. If it does, I’m not sure the club realises what it will lose.
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Indeed.
Or perhaps the Kop shifted demographically and became that little bit more middle class over the last couple of decades? Perhaps due to upward mobility and along with it an increase in disposable income. The club can, and will, increase ticket prices if fans can afford them – and the demand and subsequent ticket sales back that up.
It’s not necessarily an OOT issue, more one to do with an increasingly mature crowd that’s done well for themselves. The issue might be the pulling up of the ladder by the previous generation(s) – something youngsters face all over British society, not just at Anfield. Priced out of pretty much every part of modern life.
Art is essentially a code that the artist asks the viewer to crack. That’s why artists are usually so reluctant to discuss the meaning of their work.
You aren’t supposed to understand it, unless you are as smart as the artist and the artist usually sees themselves as very smart indeed. The artist doesn’t want Dave the plasterer to get what they mean. That would suggest Dave is as smart as they are.
This article has reminded me that I miss art in my life. I genuinely do. Up until 22 my only experience of art had been flicking through a Salvador Dali book whilst wrecked on mushrooms.
Moving to Paris at 21 and going out with my current girlfriend a year later changed that. I’d never have got into art in this country and I know for sure that unless you include an Ian Brown poster on the wall then none of my mates have either.
My room was always full of naked women once I met my girlfriend. I remember there was always a lot of Klimt and Matisse on the walls and postcards everywhere. It wasn’t just art though. Paris inspired me to read all the classics. Little things like visiting Jim Morrisons grave then wanting to know more about Oscar wilde, Edith Piaf and Sarah Bernhardt who are also buried in Pere Lachaise. From hanging out at the Shakespeare company I then read all the beat generation books and so on. The radio didn’t turn over from Radio 4 long wave in 7 years and in truth, it didn’t turn off either. I really miss culture in my life.
Back to art though, I’m sure the lady in the van (above) has a point to a degree but the art I found myself liking wasn’t about being a code to crack and I couldn’t get into that anyway. Again, just by chance, finding out that Vincent was number 1 the day I was born around the time I spent a few days in Arles, whilst hitch hiking round France, caused me to ask why Vincent cut his ear off and discovering he tried to stab Gauguin 10 mins before really impressed me. Learning of their madness made me appreciate their work. I kind of understood they had to paint because they were mad. It was a necessity. It’s funny but in my life here I probably couldn’t get into Gauguins work from Tahiti. I’m ok with the smack but I can’t endorse the work of a paedo.
Now I’m fully back to living in England and those days are a distant memory, I just love footy. Not just Liverpool. My son plays Saturday and Sunday and I love that as much as the reds. It dominates my life and doesn’t leave much time for much else.
I know that comment isn’t that related to the article so much but it made me think. People are lucky living in Liverpool. It’s quite cultured. I remember on my return around 2000 I went to see Benjamin Zephaniah at the Bluecoat in Liverpool but that was it then, culture was over. Whilst I’m on the subject, the reason is largely because the antiquated fools who run Chester will stop at nothing to protect it’s heritage. I was in Manchester for the match on Saturday and it struck me how good their city is. They’ve done a brilliant job of keeping the old industrial feel but also evolved in the way a city needs to. In Chester, we don’t even have a cinema let alone a theatre. If there’s a gallery it’s only a shop and not somewhere I can hang out. There’s nothing really. There’s nothing cultured going on. Apologies for the gibberish but this article made me think I must do more to discover art and culture. Less footy more art. Suits my pocket too. Problem is though, it’s just empty words. Now Klopp is here everything’s intensified ten fold. I watch vines of him laughing on loop for 15 minutes. I’ll have to get myself over for the Liverpool Biennial next year innit. I love Yoko. Thinking about it, hers was the first art I liked. I loved it when John said he climbed the step ladders, took the magnifying glass, and it said ‘Yes’ on the ceiling and not rip off or grrhh, haha. I got that.
You sound like a ‘fun guy’………
One for Xmas crackers there.
And this is why I love theThe Anfield Wrap!
Its my lunch time and I was going to read a book – on footie – “The Blizzard” a 1/4 publication which approaches footie differently – andf then I thought, ” Just go and have a quick look at TAW”, and I was hooked in again.
I do the Radio 4 and Radio 6 thing now, Radio 5 is too light weight! I watch my teenage sons more than Liverpool FC – just because I love watching my lads play footie and I do a bit of coaching. A bit like Robin I probably do too much footie, but last weekend of all weekends I did the reverse.
My brother and family came up from where they now live in Cornwall bearing New Order tickets and I couldnt miss that. Who knew that the new liverpool were about to really kick in? I said to my brother beforehand that I would take anything but a thrashing, just give us a performance but please dont get stuffed!
Watched the game in a pub off shiel road and headed towards the gig after, absolutely flying – the gig was immense – two bits of “performance art” in less than 6 hours – what a night.
Much like Robin this article – the comment on the missing people amongst others – just got me thinking on a random wednesday afternoon about stuff – and I love the fact that this site and the people who use it or contribute can make me do that.
ps got a night on my own and I am going to rewatch the city game tonight!