Saturday, August 25, 2007

Modern art is ...

... curious. Have a look at this photo from me at the Pompidou Center of Paris.



You have to have guts to tell people that's art.

7 comments:

noteventime said...

I guess I have some guts then.

Anonymous said...

It's unbelievable, that's the uglier statue I've ever seen in my entire life! How can they say that it's ART!?!

Anonymous said...

This is really a shame... probably the most expensive piece of blank white wall in history.

That reminds me of a story... I think it happened in the same stupid museum (I'm sorry my taxes are being used to pay for it). Some "sculpture" was nothing else than a WC. Some guy naturally used it for what it's designed for. He got sued!

skierpage said...

Sure it's art, read the second sentence of the "art" article on Wikipedia.

If the white canvases are by Robert Ryman, they're part of his almost absurdly refined explorations of (material + white paint) on wall. I used to like him a lot. White paintings make you concentrate on light and materials.

The floor piece looks like Carl Andre's work. When you're trying to be symmetric and non-hierarchic and non-referential, you sometimes end up with rectangular plates on the floor ;-)

It's easier to enjoy conceptualists and minimalists when they're being heroic ("a 5-ton cube of salt"! "A perfectly round hole in the gallery 50 feet deep"!) But especially after wars, artists were critiquing heroism as well. If it leaves you cold I sympathize.

Benoit Jacob, I think that's an apocryphal story around "Fountain", the men's urinal that Marcel Duchamp put in a gallery in **1917**. That was a mind-blowing thing to do at the time, "most influential artwork of the 20th century" in a survey. If such pieces make you think "Any idiot can do that" and inspire you to notice pleasing forms in the world around you, Duchamp would be very happy!

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the Emperors New Cloths. If a famous artist says it it art, the community will agree in fear that they may be shamed to not see it as art. There is nothing creative of informative in this work. If the artist thinks that this is a “explorations of (material + white paint) on wall”, then the artist would make a good wall painter and nothing else. It is a 5 minute hack of the art community. The artist just wants fame and money for doing nothing more that a person with a wall, white paint and a paint roller could do in 5 minutes of time. This also reminds me of an old George Carlin line “Nail 2 pieces of wood together and some schmuck will buy it”.

The Hawk

Anonymous said...

Ha! There is the same square thing in Chicago's art institute, but at least is a red square on a white wall.

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you... what a waste of space, what a waste of money! I hope you asked for a refund!