The allure of gold in contemporary art

Uniform golden squares on black background, painting

Small uniform squares gleam uniquely as light reflects upon their wrinkled surface. Blackness envelops the rest of the canvas, hugging it tightly you’d never distinguish brushstrokes. So dark, the back seems to hide valuable treasure, yet displaying golden artifacts before us.

Squares of slightly different shapes and sizes, some are bigger, some are smaller. Their gleam and twinkle steal the attention of any passerby. This painting, this artwork cannot be refused attention. It jealously keeps it too, however rich and wealthy the painting looks. Though it does give something back: it naturally brightens any room it is in, but does so at the expense of everything else. It features selfish traits, seeking to attract attention, being the centre of any conversation.

The lack of any other colour is unnerving. It confuses the viewer: is it a painting, is it real gold, is it meaningful, or is it purposeless? It exposes bright gold patches, but there is nothing else to go on. It faces us with its austere wealth, speaking nought but shades of light, yet it manages to talk louder than anyone in the room. Hozier’s song Who we are has a couple of verses that express this tension of witnessing indifference from something so meaningful.

“How can something be so much heavier

But so much less than what it seems?”

Who we are – Hozier

There are few delicate, rough greyish outlines around random squares. Such meaning in an artwork of contrast. Why this one? Why only one? It does not provide any answer, similar to other paintings for that matter – one feels the need for a key to decipher the meaning of an artwork, and this one feels particularly out of reach. Much like any other modern contemporary painting, it almost mocks the viewer a little about its meaning: “you do not know what I’m about, and that’s your problem”. Lack of any colour here other than black, gold, and a little grey, may make the viewer a little anxious, perhaps confused. How is there any meaning to what seems to be simply gold plating on a canvas? The squares clearly are not neatly aligned, they are morphing and merging with one another, becoming nearly a sea of gold and sunrays, but it stops short of that. It's as if we caught it at the moment just before it all merges together, beating the darkness back from whence it came. Its golden shade is mere reflection of light, not dissimilar from windows.

There is tension felt as the light touches any painting and places it in a position of resistance towards the viewer. “I am here, light is upon me, and I urge you to acknowledge and see me.” Should the viewer ignore a painting, it would effectively be the same as if the light had never shone on it. Yet, it is there and it resists the viewer’s ignorance. This is a little metaphysical but the point is that every painting requires light for it to be viewed and enjoyed. Yet it can only exist if it is acknowledged by viewers. Paintings are at our mercy, we are royalty and artworks parade for us at museums or homes for our pleasure. They each cry out for our attention, wanting it fully and permanently, like flowers in spring. But then they coat their meaning in layers of symbolism and often never really reveal it fully. This dance between the viewer and an artwork is necessary to unlock the latter’s purpose.

An artwork’s essential or primal meaning can be important but more often than not it is superfluous to what the work actually makes one feel. Any painting will have multiple meanings for each viewer. The point is not to understand what the artist intended, but to see the artwork, like it, and feel it move us. Meaning is derived through emotion, not intellectual pondering. A painting may make one feel disgusted or surprised, loved or jealous, indifferent or inspired, the importance is to see these emotions, feel them, and then to understand what it means for us in our little world inside our heads. How does this painting make me feel, and why is it I feel so?  

“Its existence here before me makes me uncomfortable, or perhaps I’m inspired or simply indifferent. It resists giving me the key to its existence – why are you here?”

As viewers, it is incumbent onto us to do that work. The artists produced something out of whatever it was that they felt or inspired them. Once final and light shines on their work (light both physically and metaphorically as viewers gaze on them), its primal meaning matters little. It takes a life of its own, playing with the viewer’s feelings and thoughts. Of course, every painting will feature a little bit of something that will guide the viewer towards that initial, essential, first layer of meaning intended by the artist, but symbolism can be misread.  

Yet, unlike other paintings, this golden rectangle does not give anything back, other than an indifferent sparkle, a gentle twinkle, like a flirty wink. Instead of giving the viewer some meaning, answering questions perhaps, guiding one’s thoughts towards a key message, or perhaps asking difficult questions, much like similar contemporary modern artworks, it simply steals the show and presents itself as whole. It is gorgeous, fabulous, enlightening, by its mere existence. It requires light only to assert its presence, and gives little back. 

“I opened myself to the tender indifference of the world” – Albert Camus.

Contemporary modern art exists through its viewers, it does not seem to care about anything else other than being viewed, precisely because its meaning and existence sit outside of it – unlike older paintings before the modern period where their meaning sat closer to their being. Older paintings contain meaning and purpose due to the things that are depicted in it – not so for modern art that simply despises exegesis, focusing mostly on moments and feelings. Oddly, here, what this golden attitude tells us is that it exists through our viewing it (like modern art) and it and of itself (like pre-modern art, such as Christian art). It circles back to older styles of paintings where their purpose sat in the very things they depicted. Here, this artwork tell us that it is valid also without our approval or us viewing it, that it exists outside our interest – “light is upon me, and I exist outside of you viewing me”. It cares not if you look at it and if you enjoy it. It’s almost as if it asks: “aren’t I so perfect?”  

We are fickle to think that this painting sits and exists only for our enjoyment, that our gaze activates its purpose and meaning. It mocks us through its many gold pieces, just in front of us, for our taking. It says so little yet so much. It reminds us of golden beaches on holiday, golden evenings and golden sunsets, where the sun so shone that it warmed some cold evening or mellowing your melancholy. It perhaps recalls a view onto a sea of slight golden waves.

Sun shines on a post-modern building's wavy façade.

This gold, present in front of you, is so close, up for the taking! Expensive no doubt, it nags you. Because it is saying so little, it invites interpretation. Because it is outside of human interaction, it therefore demands such invaluable attention. Gold is valuable in itself, expensive as a commodity and a means to achieve great wealth. Though that is the case for nearly every other painting, able to fetch millions on the art market, they are appreciated because we have decided so. This painting is different, it does not fetch anything – it is expensive. Gold is bullion. Its value is inherently linked to human history, reminding users of it – “you are a fickle wealth-seeker, and I exist outside of you.”

Each gold square has its own individuality, its own space. No two squares are the same – there is uniqueness through small but important differences. Each reflects a unique story of how and when it was glued to the canvas. Each speaks volumes of the work and breath it took to create meaning through repetition. Much like our lives, we each have self-worth inherently in ourselves, by virtue of our own existence, but it can be appreciated only when viewed upon. We give our lives meaning by our own creation where we structure our schedules through repetitive stints, each day a near copy-paste of the previous, but not exactly. It embodies the absurd of Albert Camus where each day passing is yet another indifferent existence where we do the same thing as yesterday. Every day and everything in it is absurd. There is no essential exoteric meaning – there is just existing in a void of purposeless lives. We derive our own meaning through our own creation. We build purpose when we want to. Days go by and each day we do the same thing. That repetition may seem absurd – how can we live so? But as Camus said: it is up to us to make meaning out of nothing, to make purpose out of repetitive tasks.

As light shines on the painting, creating thousands of glistening shades of golden rays, so too do our days year by year shine ever so differently yet almost exactly the same, and so too do each of us shine differently under various lights, some more than others, some more golden at various moments. We strive for individual perfection, each day to be the day when that bring us purpose and pleasure and meaning. Yet, we seem to find it only through a holistic perspective of the whole, when we take a step back and decide what is meaningful for us.