From: Christopher Lovenguth (chrisml@pacbell.net)
Date: 02/24/02-11:52:24 AM Z
For humor. A retelling of Dave Barry's column....of course Duchamp wasn't
British.
Janitors and artists never see eye to eye
We Americans tend to assume that the British are more intelligent than we
are, because they speak with British accents. That's why we need to know
about the Turner Prize.
This is a much-publicized prize awarded annually to a British artist. The
people who award it say it's ''one of the most important and prestigious
awards for the visual arts in Europe.'' Besides prestige, the winner gets
20,000 pounds, which, if you convert it to American dollars, is a large wad
of American dollars.
To win that kind of money, you'd think the artist would have to produce an
actual, physical piece of art -- a painting, a sculpture, a statue of the
Queen carved out of cheese -- something.
Nope. The 2001 Turner Prize went to an artist named Marcel Duchamp, whose
entry was entitled: ''R. Mutt'' It consists, of a urinal place on the ground
with the name "R. Mutt" printed on it. That's it. In other words, this guy
got 20,000 pounds for demonstrating the same artistic talent as a bathroom.
Here's the scary part: He deserved to win. I say this because, according to
BBC News, his strongest competition was an artist whose entry consisted of a
dusty room ''filled with an array of disparate objects, including a plastic
cactus, mirrors, doors and old tabloid newspapers.'' Some gallery visitors
mistook this for an actual storeroom, before realizing that it was art.
So Marcel Duchamp's urinal probably looked pretty darned artistic to the
Turner Prize jurors. The prize was formally presented by Madonna, who said:
''Art is always at its best when there is no money, because it is nothing to
do with money and everything to do with love.'' That Madonna! Always joking!
You should know that the artistry of Marcel Duchamp's is not limited to
toilets. Another of his works is entitled "TheLarge Glass'' It is made of
lead foil, oil paint, and wire forms sandwiched between large panes of
glass.
The answer is that Duchamp has an artistic asset that you don't have: the
fervent admiration of professional art twits. For example, one critic wrote
that Duchamp's TheLarge Glass; "The top half of the glass features a strange
mechanical form that represents the bride, while the bottom half,
representing the bachelors, includes diagrammatic renderings of both a
coffee grinder and objects resembling dressmakers' mannequins. '' Duchamp
has also received critical acclaim for attaching a bicycle wheel turned
upside down and mounted on a kitchen stool. This annoyed the public, which,
being the stupid old public, did not recognize that the bicycle wheel and
stool was art. Naturally the critics thought it was brilliant.
Frankly, I admire Marcel Duchamp. He can do whatever he wants, and the
critics will declare that it's art, especially if it annoys normal people.
If he suspended a bucket over an art-gallery door so it dumped water on
whoever walked in, he'd be hailed as a genius. In fact, he may already have
done this.
Another important British artist is Damien Hirst. In 1995 he also won the
Turner Prize, for an entry that consisted of (I am not making any of this
up) a cow and a calf cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde. Last
October, a London gallery threw a party to launch an exhibition by Hirst.
When it was over, there was a bunch of party trash -- beer bottles,
ashtrays, coffee cups, etc. -- lying around. Hirst, artist that he is,
arranged this trash into an ''installation,'' which is an artistic term
meaning ``trash that the gallery can now price at 5,000 pounds and try to
sell to a wealthy moron.''
The next morning, in came the janitor, who, tragically, was not an art
professional. When he saw the trash, he assumed that it was trash, and threw
it away.
''I didn't think for a second that it was a work of art,'' he later told the
press.
When the gallery staff arrived, they went out and retrieved the artistic
trash from the regular trash, then reassembled the original installation,
guided by photographs taken the night before.
So to summarize the London art scene: A trash arrangement, created by an
award-winning artist, is painstakingly recreated by art gallery
professionals, who hope to sell it, for 5,000 pounds, to an art collector,
assuming the collector can open the gallery door, which might be blocked by
a doorstop placed there, to critical acclaim, by another award-winning
artist.
The thing to bear in mind about all this is that everyone involved has a
British accent. Including, more and more, Madonna.
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Lovenguth [mailto:chrisml@pacbell.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 9:21 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: RE: What is "Good Photography"?
My last post might have been a frustration rant, which I didn't mean to
happen. It is that I get a little upset when people go around saying some of
the things said both here in the forum and in that column that started this
whole discussion. I have to admit that I didn't personally see the exhibit
either so I cannot say that this work was ingenious. When I look at
reproductions of his work online I can't say that I even like them, but I
have seen worse. I think (the more I read about Creed) that he is mocking
and commenting on exactly what most people are complaining about. I don't
think he is a "highbrow" sort of person. At the same time there is
conception and intent behind his work too. I at least would reserve true
judgment until I personally see his work.
I would also like to say the logic used in that article could apply to many
artists. For example just replace Martin Creed's name with Duchamp and
replace the work with R. Mutt. That was "uninspired crap" as well right? It
didn't just start a whole movement in art and thought. What about janitors
that clean the real R. Mutt's of the world? Why isn't that art too?
http://www.designboom.com/portrait/creed.html
http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_471405.html?menu=
http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_469929.html?menu=
http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_469415.html?menu=
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