Shit Storm
Loose bowels over Europe. A giant inflatable dog turd is wreaking some havoc across the pond, and no, the story's not from The Onion. From Agence France Presse:
GENEVA (AFP) - A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday. The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.
Comments
Pic of the turd here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7558129.stm
It's really sad to me that real art is degraded by trash like this that gets called "art", polluting the word itself. Perhaps we need a new term "anti-art". I wish we could just admit that the whole modern "art" movement was one of mankind's biggest mistakes, sweep it under the carpet, and move on.
Presumably artists wanted to elevate their status as "mere" artists to that of 'modern philosopher'. Art is NOT philosophy, and never will be; for that you need words expressing complex thoughts.
Is this honestly what young aspiring artists are supposed to look up to as an example of something noble to produce - giant inflatable butt plugs and turds? It's a tragedy.
Posted by: David J at August 13, 2008 3:58 AM
I was gonna say this is art? but David J beat me to it and said it much better.
When are we gonna start laughing these so-called artists out of the gallery with stuff like this?
Not everything's got to be sunny fields of flowers (I like The Scream) but, please, there's nothing artistic about dog turds or elephant dung.
Anyone else would be sued. Think the artist will be held accountable? He should be. One of those kids in the children's home could have been hurt.
Posted by: T's Grammy at August 13, 2008 4:59 AM
I have a rule of thumb regarding art; If I can explain myself what is the message of the art piece in 3 minutes, then the art piece is worth nothing for me. This is the case of that big piece of feces. It is a no-value for me.
Posted by: Toubrouk at August 13, 2008 5:07 AM
T's Grammy, I laugh at crap (pardon the pun) like this all the time, I don't care who the artist is. If art is supposed to provoke a thought and/or a reaction, well, my reaction to this was laughter, while thinking about the artist "what a maroon"! o_O
Posted by: Flynne at August 13, 2008 5:09 AM
"If art is supposed to provoke a thought"
This notion has become ingrained in us and I wish we could 'untrain' it; we view art almost as though we desperately want it to "provoke" a "thought/idea" in us ... as if, if we don't, it's our weakness for being too "shallow" to "understand". So we search for meaning, but we really can only find what already exists in our own minds. So actually the "art" functions as little more than a Rorschach inkblot - a trigger for initiating your OWN thought process.
It may even be impossible for art to truly "provoke" worthwhile thought in an observer. Why? Because:
- Valuable thoughts are inherently very complex.
- To truly "provoke" a valuable thought it must be *effectively communicated* to the viewer.
- In order to communicate complex thoughts, you *require* a sophisticated, common communications symbology WITH complex grammar.
- Painting/modelling imagery constitute neither a complex communications symbology / grammar, nor are they common between artist and observer (there is no 'painting grammar').
Pick a random interesting idea - say for example, "Reason is man's only absolute", or even the average blog comment - and imagine trying to express that in a painting in a way that will reliably and solidly communicate the idea to viewers. You'll probably find you tend to want to fall back on words in one way or another.
Even using the name of a painting to 'guide' the viewer as to your meaning is a cop-out - an admission that you had to fall back on words.
For those scenarios where imagery really beats words - say, images of war, or capturing portraits - photography has supplanted painting; the utility of art was thus partially gutted, and artists wanted to feel more important than 'mere' decorators. Artists today also have had this idea drilled into them that they are supposed to try "provoke thoughts".
It took me a long time as artist to undo the damage in myself of thinking of art in terms of all sorts of things that it wasn't. The idea that the 'whole world' is wrong rather than yourself always seems too unlikely.
Posted by: David J at August 13, 2008 6:36 AM
Was it inflated with methane?
Posted by: VIC CARS at August 14, 2008 3:26 AM
