ABSTRACT
A particular work of art, The Great Bear (1992) by the English artist, Simon Patterson (b.1967) (Plate 18), makes reference to almost every aspect of the world of contemporary art. His corruption of the London tube map, the original design of which is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is replete with cerebral humour. On one level it is a homage to the achievements of Western culture and thought. On another, it observes the flat surface of Pop Art, which in spite of the evidence of human progress represented by the names that have replaced the stations, particularly the philosophers of the Circle line, offers very little else besides. But its most perspicacious observation, I believe, is to be found in the subject itself. It suggests to me, at least, that the art market lies on top of the art world, rather as the overground runs above the underground. The work encapsulates the intention of this chapter, which is to show that International Contemporary art needs the intellectual musings of the art world in order for it to be a sought-after good on the commodity market. This is the central tenet of Pop Art, and it is how the two worlds function. This is why I like to refer to art created in this context as International Contemporary art, because it has global aspirations and is intended to be digested by the freemarket-loving, democratically inclined, transnational elite. As I argued strenuously in Chapter 2, most of the value in this commodity can be attributed to extrinsic factors, and even if the work is traded only nationally or regionally it still aspires towards a global audience and dresses itself in an international aesthetic. International Contemporary art is a complex commodity, and I appreciate that the term sits uneasily in the art world, but it is defined intellectually and physically by the market in which it is exchanged. Its complexity is heightened by the often stridently anti-consumerist claims made by the many writers, curators and artists who support the international art world for contemporary art.
