From: Thor Bols (thorbols@hotmail.com)
Date: 02/25/02-07:08:18 PM Z
Nice try, but forget it. Your clever retelling presupposes on the part of
the reader an awareness or a willingness to consider the work of Duchamp.
I'm certain that it is lost on the originator of this thread, an inhabitant
of Cheney Country - a vast cultural wasteland where even Remington is
considered avant garde (unless it is the pump or lever-action variety)
>From: Christopher Lovenguth <chrisml@pacbell.net>
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: RE: What is "Good Photography"?
>Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 09:52:24 -0800
>
>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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