Probing the Pickled Penis

by Pieter Kos

Recently within this pluralist academy, Mark Prent, a
current visiting artist/instructor, showed slides of his work
and so prompts the following polemic. His work is of tormented
bound and suffering figures and body parts (heads, jar of penises
cum pickles), frighteningly real with flesh tones. His brief
comment on the nature of the work implies acceptance of the
formalist orthodoxy of ''art'', and his creations demonstrate to
what absurd lengths that orthodoxy can be exploited to support
a personal fetishization in the name of art.

Formalism maintains philosophically that pure aesthetic
values dominate in responding to art. It is felt that it is no
longer important to believe or even have knowledge of the myths
and visions out of which the work of art is created. Thus we ad-
mire, and are moved in a similar fashion by any art object whether
it be a fresco of Christ, an African or Indian mask, or a Noland
painting. In opposing this aestheticism it is pertinent to note
that the notion of ‘art object' only arrived in the human mind
with the loss of western catholic (universal) mystic belief. Since
the Renaissance the art experience of deepening human connection
with cosmos/life/God was substituted with the purely aesthetic
experience. Even the paintigs of Modern Men such as Kandinsky and
Rothko are admired from the formal point of reference rather than
from reference to the spiritual and transcendental values they
were expressing. Heart warming is the fact that the modernist
school of formalists have been under attack in recent times for
its insularity and lack of substantive meaning as it deteriorates
artistically into mere deeration, self-indulgent expression, and/or
fetishization of materials and marks.

On this last note, Mark Prent seems to have left himself open
for criticism. Duringthe discussion he side-stepped questions re-
garding the nature and intent of his products by calling, rather,
for more attention to the formal qualities of form, texture, colour.
Prent offered no explanations for his subject matter other than
that it was the subject of his own personal intrigue and enthusiasm.
This seems questionable as something seems missing in the face of
work so high in shock value, which resides in the halls of art
galleries, but seems more appropriately placed in a Theatre of Horror.