Night at the Museum
The problem with Modern Art is that most people don’t understand what the fuck is going on half the time. The idea here is that you make something so inexplicable that people are forced out of their daily routine and given something to think about. Unfortunately, this practice turns most people off to the idea of art as these sorts of things tend to be really weird. We, as a culture and seemingly as a species, no longer prize execution. We have narrowed the beam of our artistic focus and that beam shines almost exclusively these days on such idiotic ventures as Damien Hirst’s Shark in a Box; AKA The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
This sort of art isn’t for me, I am a storyteller and a comedian at heart and my art is, more or less, the art of words and human experience. I am able to step back from my personal opinions and look at this objectively, even though it seems completely ridiculous. People are and should be allowed to pursue various artistic mediums. My problem is that this is what’s big right now and that we are not celebrating things that deserve to be celebrated in the way we should be. So-called “low art” (that is, comics, cartoons, animation in general, any art that relies on story rather than pure visuals) is spoken of pejoratively and with a sneer of disgust in art communities and schools. Meanwhile, people are paying millions for a preserved shark in a box. Seems a bit…strange doesn’t it?
The best part about this comic is that it is mostly true, minus the Sasquatch and deity disguised as a common household feline. My brother saw this very installation at the Philly Museum of Art and was appalled. When he told me about his experience in this white room filled with white panels hung from the walls and ceiling I was taken aback. He went on to explain that a strange hippie was sitting on one of the stools and listening to various voices robotically naming the days of the week in no particular order. It got me thinking…maybe that guy was the art!
Apparently he had come to the same conclusion independently. What can I say? We are brothers.
This points me to my main problem with Modern Art: people are no longer sure what art is and are, essentially, having to be told by gallery coordinators and school professors what does and doesn’t qualify. It’s a hilarious system but a shitty one at the same time.
Personally, all I want to see is some more diversity.
Bro, artists love Pixar. Do more Pixar stuff, and you’ll be famous. Trust me.
Yeah, draw Nemo!
Also I went to the Aquarium the other day and saw real sharks. It was way cooler than that art piece!
sometimes, if you dont read the notes, you will not understand a fuck of whats going on at the comic.
what is art after all? a pretty piece of something? or just some piles of junk aparently without any reason to be? its kind of, anyoing having to think about those stuff because art is realy relative.
we can call art like a comunication channel right? right? i dunno, what the fuck im talking about anyway?
Confused, Dazed, Speechless…
MONDAY
SUNDAY NIGHT WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY
That guy was just learning his days of the week and it blew his mind.
Is that Brock?
one time, at an art exibition, there was an ‘instillation’ and it was a guy, on the ground….eating roasted chicken.
Being through five art history classes with a premier instructor who knew his stuff…. I came to realize that Modern Art is shaped by the CRITICS not the artists!! If you ever go to a modern art convention to listen to the panel of artists as they explain their ‘great’ art works, typically it’s a bunch of BS and unless they’re great speakers they don’t sound like they really believe what they’re saying. I mean I get the idea behind it too…but ultimately I think this form of high-art is just another way for rich people to go ‘I’m so filthy rich I’ll buy this! because no commoner would!’ Yeah.
Um…. I believe this installation is signifying time and how it’s cylical. That’s what I think anyway. I don’t think the guy is really a part of the art. I think he’s sitting down and actually contemplating like the sign suggested. I almost get a feeling of futility thinking about a recording of something naming off the days of the week. There’s usually like a plaque sitting around telling you what the author was thinking… Ah! I found a website!
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/375.html
Excerpt:
“In the installation of these works, each individual’s voice plays through a pair of thin, square, off-white speakers that face one another, clipped to floor-to-ceiling metal cables. The community of voices emanating from these speakers—which are configured in two rows across a long exhibition space—may be experienced collectively or listened to in isolation, in what Calvin Tomkins described in the New Yorker as “discrete ribbons of sound” in which we hear the “human voice making unintentional music as it evokes the passage of time.” Mesmerizing and moving, the effect of Days and Giorni is also forceful and unrelenting. As Nauman both repeats and deftly rearranges the days of the week, he alters and undermines the very sequence that normally measures our lives in procession. “
hey the impressionist were not considered artist but then they revolutionized everything that came afterward, I think comics are pieces of artworks look at snoopy at mafalda they are awesome
one thing I have noticed about modern art is you need to follow the money. during my freshman year of college a friend and I were sharing a gallery space for an opening in about a week. my pieces were mostly pen and ink while his were charcoal. they were all drawings of everything you can imagine, birds, fish, people, plants, landscapes, still lifes, etc. basic art studies. we didn’t even have a chance to set it up before the coordinator told us they had to postpone our show for this woman who did installations, at first we were fine with it until we saw what she did. all she did was set up mannequins and have them wear red lightbulbs. we didn’t get it, nor did anyone else, she had to explain it and still some people cocked their heads in confusion. she made a lot of money off it, as did the gallery. ours did too, but not near as much as hers. it comes down to money, generally, the more outlandish the art the more money it makes. like Ehren said above, some people want to appear worldly or into the arts so they buy into whatever is being sold, whether it makes sense or not.classic art isn’t “in vogue” anymore.
plus, if you have to explain your art then you didn’t really do a good job. art should transcend all classes, everyone should be able to understand it, though not necessarily relate to it. it should evoke something in everyone whether it be admiration or some deeper emotion.
Oh man if I saw an installation like that, I would have been crazily happy if the contemplating hippie was really a hyper realistic wax sculpture! I’d also appreciate a hyper-realistic sculpture of a student contempalting a Rothko painting!
In that case you wouldn’t notice the true, skilled piece of art unless you actually stopped for a moment. . . . Damn, now I want to make that into a series.
Thank you for summarizing EXACTLY what I have been trying to say ever since I left art college. Seriously, there were some two dimensional and three dimensional and even some performance pieces that were really great in the years I went there but… mostly it was household objects covered with glitter or bodily fluids.
(P.S. The author of this comment bears no relation to Shark-In-A-Box)
I had to suffer through selling tickets to something like this. The worst part was that as a ticket seller part of my job was suffering through the ‘exhibit’ in all of its wankery.
The only thing that kept me from wanting to kill everyone was that the ‘gallery’ was housed in a really beautiful old armory. I just felt so bad that such bullshit was being made of a building with so much history but–that’s NYC for you. So I’m told by the archaeologists and anthropologists I know, anyway. I agree with you, modern art is frustrating and usually ridiculously stupid.