May 17, 2007
Back in the mists of time the artist was a craftsperson, much like the designer is today. Constrained by the harsh economic realities of life the artist relied on patronage for his or her - usually his - daily bread and lead.
Some visionaries did point the way to today's artist-demiurge figure being notoriously flaky bastards seemingly incapable of completing anything while others transformed their lives into proto-burlesque soap operas, but on the whole, the business of being an artist was well understood.
Since 1863, the year that brought us Manet's Olympia and Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, things have changed rather radically. Quickly followed by the impressionists and the subsequent blooming of modernism the artist was freed from the status of l'homme enchaîne and rapidly became a kind of delinquent professional, answerable only to his or her - still usually his - own unreliable muse.
As a result the actual work of an artist remains a mystery to many people. How happy, then, we should be that Arts Unwrapped is offering us peasants an opportunity to visit artists' studios in East London.
On the other hand, some may find themselves saddened by the actual nature of art practice - despite the visions of debauchery and the copious volumes of Baudrillardian pseudo-scholarship that accretes around art, it remains a prosaic and workaday activity. Thankfully.
A total of 40 studios will be open for three weekends in May and June. See artsunwrapped.com for more details.
Posted by: Jason Walsh
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Former designer turned journalist Jason Walsh writes about design,
culture, politics and technology and has contributed to a wide range
of newspapers and magazines in the UK, the United States and Ireland.
He studied fine art at the University of Ulster and currently divides
his time between Dublin and Belfast.
