BLACK&BLOOD

FUCK ART. WE WANT THE FAME.
The effects of Celebrity Culture on Art in the Noughties


I think the most influential stage in any person's life is their teenage years.  It's only really as we move into adulthood that we begin to develop those solid interests that help to shape us into the individuals we're destined to become.  I was born in 1989 and as a result spent my entire teenage years living in a world famed not for it's internationally acclaimed painters and sculptors or culturally significant literary masterpieces, but for social networking sites, iPods and most of all... celebrities and society's fascination with them.

Celebrities are not a new phenomenon; prominent members of society have always attracted public interest.  But in the Noughties, with the rise of the paparazzi and internet gossip sites like Perez Hilton and TMZ, that interest has skyrocketed into something more akin to an obsession. The air of mystery that once surrounded the world's superstars has been broken down to the point where we can find out exactly where our favorite celebrity is at any time, with relative ease.  We delight in seeing them get fat, get thin, stumble out of nightclubs, cheat on their husbands, cheat on their wives, get arrested, suffer mental breakdowns, struggle with anorexia, drug addiction, alcoholism, forget to wear deodorant, forget to wear makeup, forget to wear underwear, forget to wear anything at all.  WE ARE HOOKED!  Sure, some of us pretend we aren't.  But I think every one of us derives at least a tiny amount of pleasure seeing a celebrity we hate looking like crap.  We've been asked to write about art, music and culture in a decade of our choice.  In the Noughties, our obsession with fame and the relentless pursuit many of us endure for our own fifteen minutes in the one bond tying these subjects together.

Fashion has been influenced significantly by celebrity culture.  Singers and actresses replace models on the covers of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and there isn't a celebutante worth her meat who doesn't have a clothing line in the works.  The masses look towards celebrities for inspiration on how to dress, what make-up to use, how to smell.  Gossip magazines are littered with pages emblazoned with headings like 'Steal Her Style' or 'Get The Look', why bother cultivating your own style when you can nip down to Topshop and squeeze your size 16 arse into Cheryl Cole's?  The downside is that if you walk down any British high street, it isn't long before you realize nearly everyone looks exactly the same.  There are exceptions, of course. Websites like lookbook.nu offer users the ability to showcase their own original looks and alternative fashion bibles like Dazed&Confused, LOVE, i-D etc are still producing cutting-edge editorials and featuring innovative new designers.  But those brave enough to try and think outside the box when it comes to style and often lauded by passersby on the street until a celebrity steps out in similar garb and makes it acceptable.

Up until the late 90s, if you wanted to make it in the music industry and be taken seriously, you had to be talented and you had to grind.  These days, with the ever increasing popularity of TV 'talent shows' like The X-Factor, all you need is a reasonably good-looking mush and a well thought out sob story and you're halfway to striking double-platinum.  You don't even need to be able to sing anymore to make it big.  Artists (and I use that term loosely) like The Black Eyed Peas and Ke$ha have managed to swindle their way to number one with songs where the vocals are so heavily manipulated, you can barely make out what they're saying!  It isn't about being a good musician anymore... it's about being a good celebrity.  That isn't to say there are no talented, famous musicians anymore.  I enjoy a lot of contemporary music.  But even the most talented performers aren't safe from the glare of the paparazzi flash bulb.  In fact, it's often the truly groundbreaking musicians who are affected by the pressures of fame the most.  Look at Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty for example, both exceptional songwriters and performers reduced to dithering, drug-addled shells.

It's this hedonistic, self-destructive aspect of contemporary fame that has had the most significant influence on art in the Noughties.  Many elitists harbor under the impression that true art no longer exists, that we live in a society devoid of creativity, where everything has been done before and nothing is ever really new or exciting.  But art is nothing if not a reflection of the society we live in and its values.  Take a look at the work of sculptors like Guy Portelli or Marc Quinn for example.  Their pieces, immortalizing celebrities like Winehouse and Kate Moss fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction and are littered with unashamed references to their subjects' destructive natures.  Moss, in particular, has influenced a number of artists in the past decade from Lucien Freud's infamous nude painting of the pregnant supermodel in 2002 to one of my favorite artists, Stella Vine, who capitalized on her infamous 2005 cocaine scandal through a series of beautifully distorted and rather comical portraits.  Artists nowadays are fame-seekers in their own right, using websites like Facebook and Twitter as instruments to interact with their fans and communicate their work to a wider audience.  Marina Abramovic's 2010 performance piece 'The Artist is Present', where she sat immobile for 736 hours in New York's MoMA and invited spectators to sit across from her, was widely publicized on Facebook with many supporters gathering together online to discuss their experiences.

This is the world Andy Warhol always dreamed of, where all it takes to become a superstar is an internet connection and a copy of Adobe Photoshop.  It's just a shame he isn't around to see it.