Home is Where the Art is

Don't be thrown by the cover - the tank camouflaged with Constable reproductions is an artwork by Chris Dobrowolski, whereas most of the 'uses' of Constable in this book are rather more mundane. Indeed, it is mundanity which is championed. For Colin Painter the term 'use' refers to the many ways in which people relate to artworks, including such diverse functions as being sites of aesthetic contemplation, models for theoretical interpretation, wedding gifts, souvenirs, decoration and so forth. A 'useful' artwork doesn't have to be trowel-shaped and good for digging the garden, but Painter wouldn't exclude such literal functionality.

The Uses of an Artist appeals for contemporary art to make itself more accessible to a wider audience. 'Not again', you might say, but this aim is far from universal - many would maintain that an artwork can be successful even if it only reaches a tiny audience. But Painter argues that since much art is funded by the taxpayer, from public galleries and collections through to the provision of art courses in schools and universities, this accessibility is key. Contemporary art, he suggests, has gnawed at the hand that feeds it for years. Taking public money, while greeting any concessions to public accessibility with righteous indignation, can only leave art in an untenable position.

The book comprises interviews with volunteers from around the Stour Valley area - 'Constable Country' - concerning their personal engagement with Constable's work. Some of the respondents were artists and some were Constable enthusiasts, but mostly they were neither. All, however, owned some form of Constable reproduction, ranging from original mezzotints by Constable's engraver David Lucas, to art prints, tapestries, table mats, jugs and jigsaws. Painter explored the variety of ways in which people engaged with Constable's art in their homes and everyday lives. It's an intriguing project, if massively flawed - the choice of Constable in Constable Country seems almost wilfully designed to nullify any broader significance.

The logic put forward is that Constable's work proves that high art can appeal to a more general public. Yet the problems are numerous. Constable obviously appeals in his own backyard: the pride of a local boy done good helps, as does the fact that the landscapes still exist. Further, Constable is a naturalistic, quintessentially English painter, and the volunteers find his work familiar and safe. Yet none of the interviewees are from ethnic backgrounds, immediately excluding a huge swathe of the British population. Finally, Constable's paintings are nearly 200 years old: whatever radicality they had when first produced (his so-called 'snow' effect, for example) has since been absorbed to the point of cliché.

Whatever qualities the contemporary art world sees in Constable, his originality is only appreciated through the lens of art history. If he were making such paintings today, they would have far less to recommend them. Painter makes it clear that he does not expect contemporary artists to be making works that look like Constable's, but it is too late; his argument is muddied. Perhaps a subsequent project might look at a variety of more recent artists - after all, the artist who sells the most prints at the Tate is not some traditional English landscape painter, but Mark Rothko.

Painter calls for contemporary art to explore wider avenues of distribution (for prints to be available in home decoration stores, for example - perhaps he hasn't visited Habitat). He wants artists to recognise that works have 'extra-pictorial', anecdotal meanings, making them inseparable from daily life. He wants continuities between high art and grass-roots low-key practices. He wants art to accept that pleasure and celebration are legitimate goals. Above all, he wants artists to produce works that aim at domestic use, rather than institutional display. In themselves these are interesting possibilities, argued with intelligence, despite the book's peculiar methods and off-putting Borough Council design.

The central argument is that contemporary art has isolated itself from the general public: that art's oppositional status has been institutionalised (even the Chairman of the Arts Council agrees with this one). But, of course, many artists have explicitly attempted to reach a wider public. A few recent examples would be the fly-poster campaigns by Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Must Go magazine distributed on trains by Marysia Lewandowska and The Mule Newspaper, given out free for one day by street corner vendors across the country. There are many, many other examples. What Painter correctly points out is that few of these actually aim to provide art for the home - it is left to the major public galleries to produce affordable posters, although these tend to be reproductions of paintings rather than works specifically designed for print.

Painter makes his case clearly and in refreshingly straightforward prose; his project has many values which will hopefully lead to action. But fundamentally, it comes down to a question that Painter himself asks: 'what steps might be necessary [for contemporary art] to engage more with the priorities of people who currently do not participate in that world, and would the steps have such an adverse effect that they would be unacceptable?' Unfortunately, this is a question that Constable cannot answer.