by Nan Goldin was working as a go-go dancer in New York in the late seventies when she realized – thanks to a Tin Pan Alley bar owner, Maggie Smith, who pointed out – that she was a political artist.
Her most famous work was taken from that period; Endless loving chronicles the lives of Queens in Boston and the post-Stonewall queer scene in New York, of drug use and violence in the city’s subculture, exploring the universal themes of love and sex, domesticity and dependence, pain and performance through the friends. in her circle, so the wider society often considers people outside.
In recent years, she has come to the fore again, with noisy acts of protest against the museums and galleries accepting money from the Sackler family, who at the time were the main owners of Purdue Pharma, the company behind the very dangerous drug. OxyContin addict, blamed for America. opioid crisis. As a direct result of her actions over the past six years, institutions around the world – including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Serpentine and more here in the UK – have returned or refused Sackler money , and remove the family name from them. building.
Today, Goldin – who last year was the subject of a riveting documentary with filmmaker Laura Poitras – has been named number one on the annual Art Review Power 100 list, the most prestigious and most discussed ranking in the world of art. Which is surprising, to be honest, but it is surprising.
It’s probably worth mentioning that it’s rare these days that the top spot on the Power 100 goes to someone with actual power, in what we might imagine as the normal sense of the word. Last year it was occupied by ruangrupa, an Indonesian art collective whose model of inclusive, community production is “disruption[ed] the normal way of doing things” (Art Review didn’t seem entirely convinced), and the modern CEO of Art Basel, still arguably the biggest art fair, wasn’t famous in the world, seen anywhere.
Or their moments could be fleeting indeed – in 2021, a non-human entity, ERC-721 (Ethereum’s blockchain specification for NFT) topped the list, which now seems laughable. In second place that year went American anthropologist Anna L Tsing, her book on the matsutake mushroom and what it says about the Anthropocene I am really interested to read, but I don’t believe that most people in the world of art, without comment on. the rest of us, we had heard before the thing was published (she pops up again this year, at number 18, I really have to buy that book).
If Nan Goldin really was the most ‘powerful’ person in art, I think we’d be in a world that wouldn’t need her sincere, strong brand of truth. But it’s a bold and exciting statement that the secret panel of 40 chose her (as you can imagine the trolling they’d get if they weren’t), in the top ten, for the first time ever. year, made up entirely of artists.
British artist Steve McQueen is in there (number 8), for his amazingly moving film about the Grenfell Tower disaster “as a catalyst for legislative change”; as is the American artist Theaster Gates (7), an artist who combines urban planning and artistic effort to revitalize neglected urban neighborhoods, especially those inhabited by black communities. Simone Leigh (4), also American, makes work that celebrates black women while calling out their historical and ongoing marginalization.
These are, as Art Review says, “artists who are using their work, and the platform their success provides, to shape communities and push the boundaries of making art while share today.”
Activism in art is a complex thing, and not always very effective. In an interview with me last week, the artist Grayson Perry was scathing about it: “if you’re going to do activism, do it somewhere where it makes a difference, because probably everyone who sets foot in an art gallery is ever. agree with you,” he said. “You’re really preaching to the converted if you’re making contemporary art about progressive issues.”
It’s true that the people standing behind a 40-minute film about climate change in a dark room at an art gallery have probably thought about it before. But would anyone say that the women whose work comprises Tate Britain’s epic current show, Women in Revolt! should the focus be on something other than reproductive rights, equal pay and racial equality? I do not think so. The work of these artists was the shoulder of women’s liberation in the seventies and eighties, and look at where we are now (with all the usual horrors).
Nan Goldin’s achievement, even if it was just a fundamental change in the way we look at the type of people who should be allowed to fund our major cultural institutions, was a great one. But it’s more than that – she’s influenced a generation of young artists, showing them how to stand up and be counted, speak truth to power, channel their personal experiences (Goldin herself struggled with opioid addiction ) towards significant changes. And for that reason this award feels more than justified.
Things the Culture Editor Did This Week
Other Travelers, Paramount+
I’m four episodes into this glossy series, based on the novel by Thomas Mallon which traces the decades-long romance between two men who work for the US State Department, which begins at the height of McCarthyism in 1953. Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey are excellent as the central couple, a cynical aide, a talented political ally, and an idealistic, young member of the Congress staff, and the extremes of their heartbreaking situation have been bothering me all week.
She Stoops to Conquer, Orange Tree Theatre
This silly comedy of manners is one of the few 18th century plays that is regularly revived and to be honest I’m not sure why it still is. Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) is brilliant, both arch and naturalistic, and elevates events every time she’s on stage, and Freddie Fox is always excellent as a ridiculous, self-important Englishman, but I found it difficult to understand what his character saw in it. I longed to tear the trellis, and a late, unlimited view of a garden. Listen to our verdict on the show on this week’s Standard Theater Podcast; the new episode is out on sunday.
