Almost 3 years after the suicide of Johnny Gloves whilst undertaking the creation for his last performance ('Statue Of Liberty', 2010) the first graduates from the art school set up in his name have now entered the galleries and public spaces of the art world. The money from his estate goes to fund this small university located just outside of Glasgow, teaching only one programme that specialises in the new Death Aesthetic movement that has been making waves on both sides of the pond (that's slang for the Atlantic Ocean for those readers not hip), with a spate of controversy and horseplay that seems to have infected every concept on the scene. I went to the university to find out more.
"This new Death Aesthetic you keep talking about doesn't exist, what we're doing is a logical extension of post-modernism. There's nothing else besides post-modernism, I'm sick of hearing people go on about the next big idea."
"But for the sake of the argument that post-modernism didn't exist...where would you put the graduates from this university, how would you class them."
"Classifications are for art historians. At the Gloves University we encourage each of our students to follow their individual paths in life." says the head tutor, Brandon Minnegan. I roll my eyes.
"Cut the BS Minnegan. You know as well as I do that your university only selects the most artistic students from around the country. What in god's name are you doing here?"
"Mind your own business!" he snarls, clearing all the papers off his desk in one dramatic sweep of his powerful arm. I nodded. Time to talk to some of the students, looks as if this pencil neck had finally snapped.
The studio spaces are large and dark, comforting almost. There is no work on the walls or in progress, no desks or lockers. Students in this studio are simply contemplating death. I go up to the nearest one and give him a shake.
"Is what you're doing art?" I demand.
"Dude...death is art...art is life. Sex is just escape from death. You ever think of that?"
"Of course I have. You ever think that there's more to life than sitting around in the dark, playing with yourself?"
"You just don't understand."
"You're right. I don't give a shit. But tell me this hot shot, you think it's clever that people buy art when they could donate that money to charity?"
"My work is about the human condition, it transcends the immediate now and goes onto-" he mumbles. I spit on the floor and walk out in disgust. Of course he's right. I was just in a bad mood. I sat outside for a while, admiring distant roads running perpendicular to myself. What was it exactly that drove Charles Saatchi to try and murder his wife in cold blood out in public? Were the deaths of Pollock, Miro, Freud, Giotto and many more the constantly chiming bell of mortality in which to remind us that those brave creative souls were the most at risk of dying? I shook my head slowly.
I bumped into a course tutor as I crept through the halls, catching him unaware as he photographed himself standing next to the window.
"Do you think this Death Aesthetic is somehow related to western guilt over the nuclear bombing of Japan?"
"We're forgetting a whole generation gilded in an atomic fire, with the baby boomers carrying on that self-flagellation through world war two re-enactments which further goes on to the next generation. Contemporary art has finally reached a point where it can say 'Look, I'm okay with it.' I like to think."
"So if Guernica marks the start of this era would you say the work of David Shrigley or Norman McLewan marks the end of it?"
"Precisely." he says. I disappear into the shadows once again to ponder his reponse. Precisely? What was precise about anything? I had to see this Death Aesthetic in the flesh. Or at least in the gallery.
I had to travel almost four hours down to Manchester to see for myself. The work was in situ at the Whitworth Art Gallery, which is to be closed for a year whilst refurbishments take place along it's outerments. The exhibition is to take place inside the shut gallery, only observable by those on a high class invitations only list. The exhibition, titled 'Grave', is a macabre affair. The death stench has been specially imported throughout the gallery with the opened coffins of the deceased from the last one hundred years, each casket containing an individual willing to donate their body to art yet not having the correct platform until now. There are no artists names, explanations or even a little booklet I could take away in my bag and show people later. I walked alone through the gallery observing the various work, letting it enter my pores, etch itself into my brain like a laser. Time lapse videos of funerals, mummified primates, rooms all velvet black and sound proof, an ongoing performance piece where I lay in a bed from a retirement home and stared at a clock, a set of jars each containing organs arranged into the shape where they would lay in the body and attached to each other through glass tubes filled with a murky gas, the cast faces of victims from a gas attack, furniture made from upcycled coffins, an audio recording of several different graveyards at midnight played at once and so on. Death pervades all. There was a room at the end to sit in quiet contemplation of death. Though it appeared to me as though there was such a focus on the after effect of death and not much in the act of dying. Death itself could only be recognized by the living, whilst dying was a private affair. Had the children of Johnny Gloves fudged it? The art world was in uproar when he kicked the bucket, and though there were some tasteful pieces in the gallery I couldn't help but feel there was a certain kind of tasteful Tim Burton minimalist Baroque theme running throughout. What about the anti-goths, dressed in yellow? What about the culture of the death tribes of the old world? What about the exploration of the afterlife as seen in the film 'Flatliners'? Of course, this was but the first in what I imagine to be a series of events focusing on the New Death Aesthetic. It's proponents said it was to celebrate the end, it's critics called it a hodge-podge of teenage angst and necrophobia. Were the artists scared of death? Or did they embrace God as their loving saviour in this life and the next, praise the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit? I didn't know. As I picked the grave dirt from my hair later I couldn't help but think about my own death, yet I couldn't imagine it. Maybe that was the crux of the problem. I was an invincible human being living in a purgatory of half dreams. I needed to probe the inner palace of my skull shape. I needed to find the edge of civilization and wilderness. I needed to go to America.
