economic Value

Everything about art is making me sad today poor Joseph Beuys spends a lifetime trying to say something about value and ends up with all the original meaning of his work been turned into financial capitol.  The work below is the centre piece of this years Art Sheffield.  Much has been written about the artist from his early days of felt and fat to his shamanic dances on the art stage.  It feels so sad that just because something is valued at 50,000,000 euro's it's meaning is subverted - food purchased in shops in east Germany sat next to paintings finished in the life time of Marx.  It's not a difficult piece for Christ sake he didn't even need to call it" economic value" for most living around the Berlin wall in the 1980's to work out what was going on - but now it's worth 50 million and falling apart the sense of the piece is difficult to find.

Art Sheffield has decided to curate and build itself around two redundant myths the first is that Beuys is any sort of big name beyond a very small art world world view the second that people of Sheffield are not sick of been from the socialist republic of South Yorkshire.  The thing that makes me feel sad today is I'm proud of been a life long socialist and on cold winter nights with the storm of late capitalism blowing at the windows I'd be much more likely to pray to Beuys than any one eyed Jesus.

I am concerned about Art Sheffield it feels that the curators in desperate fear of appearing provincial  have settled for pedestrian.  We in Sheffield realised we were not Venice many moons ago but I'd like to suggest we do have something to offer the artworld.  People like to get involved in things they like to see things they turn up in droves if anything interesting is happening - we have a cultural city facing hard times full of proud people and proud history.  I'm sure a resurrected  Joseph would like it here if he were to visit and I'm confident he would rattle some cages.