I’M not surprised that so many visited empty rooms at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow ("Cancelled art show is a big hit", The Herald, January 1).
My family visit the Scottish National Gallery on Modern Art in Edinburgh from time to time, mainly because of a pleasant cycle there, a lovely café with outdoor seating, an impressive building to wander through, and a few appealing works of art, such as Charles Jenks’s land form. Most of the work on display, however, is ugly, vacuous, trivial, incomprehensible or vulgar. The pretentious labels provide more amusement than enlightenment.
Art so divorced from beauty, inspiration and representation of the admirable and significant can only flourish through government subsidy. If you want to see art that appeals, go to a commercial gallery instead.
I always worry that my visits to modern art galleries will be interpreted as some sort of appreciation of their contents, and permission to keep spending my taxes on such overt cultural nihilism.
Thousands visiting empty rooms at Goma should help dispel that myth.
Richard Lucas,
Scottish Family Party, 272 Bath Street, Glasgow.
I WAS surprised to read in The Herald that the "Cancelled" exhibition held in the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow last year from May to October had been a "big hit" with the public. In fact, the results of an informal survey that I carried out myself to gauge visitor satisfaction with the show indicated that an art exhibition with no art in it was proving a real turn-off.
During a one-hour period on Thursday, June 22, I noted that: of the 55 people who entered the exhibition space, 47 of them stayed for less than five minutes. Many stayed for only a few seconds before walking out, and the longest stay was just 15 minutes.
A number of visitors to the building glanced into the space but didn’t go in. Some walked in, took a photograph and walked out. One local man looked into the gallery and asked: “When’s the exhibition starting?” and when told that it had, commented:n”That’s it?” and walked away, laughing.
Although a majority of visitors I spoke to appeared to be perplexed by the concept of an art exhibition with no art in it, three people said they liked the show. One said that, by putting up the “CANCELLED” posters, the artist hadn’t gone far enough. Five women visiting Glasgow from Canada said that, although they appreciated the concept of the exhibition, it shouldn’t have been staged in Goma’s biggest space. “You want more to look at in a gallery this size” they noted.
Deedee Cuddihy,
10 Otago Street, Glasgow.
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