Please explain the world of professional art to me, can you? I don't get it - never did. Why are some artists so touted, while others sink into infamy? For instance, Jeff Koons - can anyone explain why he's a good sculptor?
Went to see the second half of the Cinema Effect show at the Hirschhorn today. I was completely bored by every piece. Afterwards I sat on a bench in front of the gift shop, made a (boring) video of people's feet as they walked past. But when I watched my own boring video, all I could think is that what I'd just made was at least as interesting as most of what was chosen to be part of the Hirschhorn show.
I have so many questions about the art world. Probably these questions will never be answered. Oh well. Whatever.
Stay cool, ya'all.
7 comments:
I totally agree. The cleverness of the first installment was simply not there. Perhaps I would feel differently if I toured the exhibit with a docent, but the self-guided version left me with virtually no memories of anything remarkable.
Art is so subjective! That's kind of what makes it so cool. It shows how different we all are! :)
Where is your foot video?
P.S.
cool capture of yourself!
I haven't seen the exhibit, but I understand completely. Hirschhorn stuff is hit & miss with me: some abstract art strikes me as having radiant soul, and some of it seems lifeless and arrogant in its size & very existence.
I guess sometimes the "art" is in the fact that it was commissioned or displayed at all. Perhaps it's really not the art itself, but the swindling of the system to get it installed, yeh?
....new form of performance art? Ah! I have found my calling...
So many ingredients get mixed up together to make "good" art -- and then, as Lynne said, it's so subjective. I never understood Dan Flavin, personally, but people seem to think he's the bees knees. I can take or leave Jeff Koons, too. So, I have no answer. I just know good art when I see it. :)
I was watching a documentary the other night on the artist Chuck Connelly called "The Art of Failure." It was a fascinating study into a tortured soul, but also the values we assign to "art," and that ying-yang relationship between artist and patronage.
Also addressed were issues an artist faces when he sees his work devalued over time. At one point, Connelly visited Andy Warhol's grave and was "telling Andy" that dying was a good career move for him and that his (Warhol's) work still held value, even moreso after death (actually, I'm not sure that's accurate..I had heard the opposite.)
He reminded me of someone who perhaps slipped into the persona of artist (tortured, drunk, raving into that harsh night, contempt for society) and then became a slave to his creation and lost his way.
Warhol's grave was odd, by the way. Set on a hill with grass that needed cutting, chain link fence and facing down over a suburban highway with 1950's ranch houses staring back at him. A bland headstone and what appeared to be a yucca plant awkwardly positioned. You would think his family (or a fan) would have had the wit to line soup cans along the rim of the stone (or have the stone cut as a Campbell's soup can.) Pour Andy. He craved high society, and he's stuck in a purgatorial suburb in Pittsburgh.
How fitting! I bet he's having a good laugh from wherever he is now, surrounded by his cronies, sipping Absynthe, maybe.
Strangely, I always "got" Andy Warhol. Even the films. Oh well.
Good question, but no answer. Sometimes I feel like it is like the Emperor's clothes. Everyone is afraid to say they just don't 'get' it. I felt that way in London where there was a huge canvas hanging in a museum with only a small red dot on it. It was 'symbolic' and oh so deep but the gravitas was lost on me. Go figure.
Post a Comment