"How can this be art?": framings of contemporary art in the news media

This paper uses content analysis to examine 33 articles relating to contemporary art published by a Melbourne metropolitan newspaper. The research demonstrates that contemporary art was presented to readers of the newspaper within a narrow range of framings, namely controversy, promotion and human interest. This finding is broadly consistent with previous studies of political news coverage. A closer reading of the controversy articles identifies certain characteristics that are ascribed to the art and to the artists. The implications of these modes of presentation for the wider reception of contemporary art are examined. It is concluded that a strategic approach to newspaper coverage should be adopted by those who seek to encourage a greater appreciation of contemporary art among popular audiences. Kate MacNeill School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne ‘How can this be art’. Kate MacNeill Ejournalist.com. au 2 Introduction Australians are considered to be enthusiastic supporters of the arts (Costantoura 2001 and Myer Report 2002). Yet there is a widespread perception that contemporary art presents a challenge to popular audiences. To date, this less than fulsome reaction to contemporary art in Australia has been interpreted primarily within one of two, insider/outsider and hence, binary frameworks. One view implicitly draws on Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of cultural capital, the starting point for the 1990s Australian study of cultural practices, Accounting for Tastes, Australian Everyday Culture (Bennett, Emmison and Frow 1999). This approach presents an opposition between acculturated art viewers, who by virtue of social class acquire particular aesthetic tastes, and a broader audience that lacks the necessary cultural competencies for the appreciation of contemporary art. The more populist view constructs an art ‘elite’ that is out of touch with the ‘realworld’ sensibilities of the community (for example Flint 2003, Bolt 2005). In reality, the reception of contemporary art is likely to be influenced by a much wider range of factors. Extensive research is required to identify the reasons why the public in general might have an attitude towards contemporary art that is at odds with that which it attracts within the art institution and indeed whether this perception is accurate. In this paper I focus specifically on the media coverage of contemporary art. As many people will only be exposed to contemporary art through newspaper and television coverage the media has a critical role in influencing reactions to contemporary art. My purpose in this paper is not to prove the extent to which this media treatment determines audience reactions, but rather to examine how the media presents stories about contemporary art. We might then speculate as to the impact that this has on its popular reception. Anecdotal evidence supports the contention that the media could play a significant role in the reception of contemporary art. In October 1997 the National Gallery of Victoria hosted the exhibition A History of Andres Serrano. The work ‘Piss Christ’ had been the subject of controversy in the United States and not surprisingly became the focal point for objections to the exhibition in Melbourne. As much of the debate concerning ‘Piss Christ’ ‘How can this be art’. Kate MacNeill Ejournalist.com. au 3 took place before the exhibition had opened, the general public’s reaction to the work clearly did not derive from a direct aesthetic encounter. Indeed, as the photograph was on display for only a matter of days before being attacked and the exhibition closed, positive and negative opinions were expressed by many who had never actually seen the work. The role of the media in the public reception of contemporary art was also evident when in 2000 the Sydney Morning Herald ‘revealed’ that the Sydney City Council was considering a proposal to locate a work by the New York sculptor, Mark di Suvero, in an historic Sydney precinct. The front page story, headlined ‘Down Came a Spider . Nightmare on Macquarie St’ (Lawson 2000), was understood by the initiators of the project to have contributed to the very short life of the proposal. This initial unfavourable response to the proposal and subsequent criticism in the media all but ensured its demise, despite support from corporate sponsors. The speed with which the media-coined pejorative titles of ‘red spider’ for di Suvero’s work and, decades earlier, ‘Yellow Peril’ for Ron Robertson-Swann’s ‘Vault’ (Wallis 2004), came to be integrated into the vernacular attests to the role of the media in the fate of contemporary art in public places. Galleries and others responsible for presenting contemporary art will often court the media with a view to attracting publicity, and therefore audiences. At the same time, the role of the media in opinion formation more generally is well established. Without an understanding of the way in which the media actually presents contemporary art to its readership, efforts on the part of art institutions may indeed be counter-productive. Publicity may attract interest in the event or particular work of art. However, depending on the nature of the actual coverage it may merely reinforce existing perceptions of contemporary art. As Jenny Harper has noted in her detailed examination of the controversy surrounding ‘Piss Christ’, the National Gallery of Victoria may have come to regret its banners outside the gallery that advertised the exhibition as ‘confronting’ and ‘provocative’ and press releases that referenced its ‘anti-Christian’ imagery (Harper 2004). ‘How can this be art’. Kate MacNeill Ejournalist.com. au 4 Framing Contemporary Art Art historians tend to think of an engagement with art as being a direct corporeal experience. In fact, for many this experience is not a private moment in the gallery, but is mediated through mass communication. In order to analyse the way in which contemporary art is presented within the news I have employed Valkenburg, Semetko and de Vrees’ (1999) concept of ‘framing’ of news items together with Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (1995). At first a survey and classification exercise was undertaken to identify common framings of contemporary art in the news media. I then sought to determine the manner in which contemporary art was being positioned and described within these articles. Aspects of contemporary art that were presented as inherent characteristics and the way in which the articles portrayed contemporary artists were singled out for close attention. Valkenburg, Semetko and de Vrees (1999) identified four common framings of news in their survey of the literature, namely conflict frame; human interest frame; responsibility frame; and economic consequences frame. Their research established that readers will recall news stories within these frameworks. Furthermore, implicit attitudes towards contemporary art within the text will also influence the reader’s reaction to not only the art being discussed, but to the nature of contemporary art more generally. In order to make this process transparent, Fairclough (1995) urges a form of discourse analysis of media texts; one that acknowledges the way in which language is both shaped by the social and, at the same time, constitutes the social (p. 55). Through this analysis, assumptions as to the inherent nature of contemporary art and of artists conveyed in the language of the survey media texts, can be revealed. The articles were drawn from the news section of the Age, a Melbourne daily newspaper in 2005. The Age might be regarded as a newspaper of record: it is news dense as opposed to entertainment based (a characteristic associated with a tabloid newspaper). All articles that dealt with a work or small number of works of contemporary visual art as a major theme were identified. The selection of articles from the news section in particular was with a view to excluding those that spoke specifically to an arts audience; reviews of exhibitions are most usually found later in the paper on pages devoted to ‘the arts’. This distinction was not always clear and reviews that ‘How can this be art’. Kate MacNeill Ejournalist.com. au 5 appeared within the news section were included. In other words, the intention was to identify articles that were designed to address the widest possible newspaper audience. ‘Contemporary art’ included work that had been produced in the past 10 years – a somewhat arbitrary cut off. However, the period could have been the last 20 years and the study would not have included any additional articles. This was due to a sharp division between those articles that dealt with works or artists that could be located within a modernist canon (often when reporting on a ‘blockbuster’ show of the masters or an auction result) and those that are more closely associated with the postmodern turn. The only borderline article in terms of the cut off date was one that referred to an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s ‘memory boxes’ which he had created throughout his lifetime (until 1987). Of the stories omitted on the basis that the art itself was not a major theme, a number referred to Indigenous art and artists. These articles focused on broader issues of Indigenous culture and social disadvantage. This is in itself of interest and further research is warranted that specifically compares the media treatment of Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary art. Other stories omitted discussed financial support and education for artists and the broader framework within which visual art production takes place. Another group of articles which were omitted for much the same reason, i.e. the art itself was not a main focus, were a series of articles reporting concerns within the arts community of the impact that the revival of the crime of sedition might have on creative activity. This selection process yielded a total of 33 articles that referred to a work o