I may not know art, but I know a foetus-headed bird ain’t it. (1544 hits)
Category: Politics -> AfghanistanRating: 1.76 on 30 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by satchel (View user info) at 2005-08-09 20:45:06 EDT
Once upon a time in the far distant past, when I was young and considerably more pretentious, I thought I was an "artist". I painted, sculpted, drew, shot black-and-white pics of my girlfriends dressed as the Virgin Mary in suggestive poses, and wrote horrific poems. My artistic development culminated in a fit of adolescent creativity: I went so far as to carry a life-size plaster cast of my own naked body through the halls of my Catholic high school. Most notable response: "Are those YOUR boobs?"
That last exploit is the only reason I had a prom date, I'm sure, considering my overall nerdishness.
By the end of my first year as a Fine Arts Major at university, I knew I'd had enough of the sulky boys in black trench coats casting seven-foot bronze cocks, and the strappy-sandal clad, peasant-skirt wearing, tambourine beating lunatics who were forever sculpting large-breasted imitation Venuses (Venii?). I'd had my fill of crafting tortured artistic statements, painfully deconstructing the artistic merits of a bicycle seat and handle-bars stapled to a wall, and I'm sorry, but a urinal does not qualify as "art". Fuck off Duchamp. You started the shitstorm of shit that follows.
Short-version: I switched my major to something useful - like English. The only thing I ever missed about Fine Art was drawing nekkid people on Tuesday afternoons. As far as art goes, I likes what I likes, and I hates what I hates.
Which brings me to today's online Toronto Star, and the seeming paucity of ideas left to Western culture.
The Laser Buddha - http://www.thestar.com
On first reading, this sounded rather neat. I mean, lasers are cool and lasers can be pretty, and I rather like art that is "beautiful". Furthermore the idea behind the project is to honour the eons-old stone Buddha's blown up by offended art critics (the Taliban). I can get behind this, yes I can.
Then I hit this paragraph: "I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose — not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement, said the 58-year-old artist (Hiro Yamagata)." Oh please, spare me the bullshit, OK? Recreating stone Buddha's in a Muslim country wracked by war where the principal opponents are the fanatics who blew up Buddha in the first place, IS a political statement.
Deal, you pretentious twit.
Art school flashback over, I read on and was pleasantly surprised to read that the lasers would be powered by solar panels and windmills. Bless their environmentally correct little hearts. My liberal nerves were tingling with politically-correct joy.
Until I read the budget.
Nine million US dollars. That's just to get the project up and running.
My liberal nerves ceased their tingling, became flaccid and limp and sad with the realization that Afghanistan needs Laser Buddha like it needs another landmine. Art has its place in a civilized society, but maybe peace first, hmmm? Medicine? Education? Possibly finger-paints for the kiddies?
The Foetus-headed Bird - http://www.thestar.com
Moving on, surfing the web, wasting time ... back to the Toronto Star and the following headline: Chinese artist defends fetus artwork.
Fetus artwork? It's rare for me to have a genuine what-the-fuck Internet moment. Between Goatse and Tubgirl, I'm pretty much inured to shocking stuff popping up in my browser. I clicked the link.
It seems that a Chinese artist exhibited, or tried to exhibit, a piece of work in a Swiss gallery that - and I still can't believe this despite seeing the photos - consists of a pickled foetus head grafted to a pickled bird body.
Pickled foetus head + pickled bird body = art?
And of course, the inevitable artist's statement ensued:
"It's precisely because I respect all life that I did this", said artist Xiao Yu. He said "the bird and fetus died because there was something wrong with them. I thought putting them together like this was a way for them to have another life."
Sometimes, there are no words to describe the idiocy of human beings. It seems to me to be inherently disrespectful to display any or part of a foetus outside a medical school; beheading said foetus and stitching the head on a hummingbird borders on psychosis.
The alarming thing is, Swiss police are investigating only to determine if the the above-mentioned foetus was ahem acquired for this specific exhibit. If it turns out to be an old specimen, as the artist claims, this piece may well end up back on display. Moral questions aside, I have to say that it's damned ugly.
These were just two stories from today's paper. There are more, and they seem particularly prevalent in Canada. For instance:
The Meat Dress - http://www.snopes.com/politics/arts/meatdress.asp
***Unusual and unrefrigerated, Jana Sterbak's meat dress, 50 pounds of raw flank steaks stitched together and displayed on a hanger at the National Gallery, is causing a cultural flap in Canada.
Entitled "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic," the exhibit was created by Montreal artist Sterbak to emphasize the contrast between vanity and bodily decay.***
I remember this exhibit coming out in 1991. Please note the embedded "artist's statement". I'm beginning to suspect the National Gallery of Canada of being a front for PETA terrorists. Somehow, Brian Mulroney is to blame, I'm sure.
Istvan Kantor -http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/12/01/Arts/kantorblood041201.html
***A Governor General's Award-winning artist was arrested in Germany ... after he attempted to throw a vial of his own blood on a sculpture of pop star Michael Jackson at a Berlin art gallery.
...
The 55-year-old Toronto artist reportedly shouted "I am protesting against the loss of independence in art" following the incident.***
While I am all for throwing bodily fluids at any representation of Michael Jackson, and his little chimpanzee too, I am more than a little disturbed that Mr. Kantor is a Governor General's Award winner (meaning he got a not-insignificant government grant). Worse than that, just how in hell does a statue of Michael Jackson and a chimpanzee warrant the label "art"? Come to think of it, I think Mr. Kantor has a point here.
Sniffy the Rat Narrowly Escapes Pulverization By Cinderblock - http://www.macleans.ca/leadersanddreamers/arts_11.htm
*** 1990: Vancouver performance artist Rick Gibson announces he will drop a concrete block on Sniffy the rat, squishing him between two canvasses. An animal rights group steals the block and hundreds of people swarm the artist. Sniffy is returned to the pet store, unharmed; Gibson gets away with a whack on the head from a protester.***
I am all for sacrificing rodents in the pursuit of medical advancement; give me a mouse sprouting a human ear on its back any day of the week. But squashment by concrete block seems an extreme pursuit of the artistic impulse. I can just see the artist's statement now:
I felt constrained by the two-dimensional nature of the canvas ... life is lived in the geometry of dimensions ... I attempted to capture the spirit of the artist subject to the tyranny of his medium.
It's all bullshit. Refined, high-octane bullshit. I'm not sure when it started, but I blame the strappy-sandal clad, peasant-skirt wearing, tambourine-beating lunatics and the sulky boys in black - all of whom failed as artists and are maliciously revenging their misunderstood genius by siccing nascent serial-killers on the general populace.
*Links to the foetus-headed bird and the laser Buddha can be found in the A&E section of the Star.
User Reviews
Submitted by Life101 (user info) at 2006-09-24 01:30:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you have a cool name is that really your name?
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-12-21 23:17:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2005-12-21 23:05:44 (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice. Are you Snark's alter or something?
-----------------------------------------
Nope, but I'm flattered you might think so.
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2005-12-21 23:05:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice. Are you Snark's alter or something?
Submitted by Wrightcopy (user info) at 2005-08-16 09:02:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 because you're absolutely right, this shit isn't art. You might be interested in the movie "The Shape of Things" with Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd.
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-08-16 08:32:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OMG (666 hits)
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-08-16 08:29:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
got the book.
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2005-08-10 10:56:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-08-10 07:41:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Short-version: I switched my major to something useful - like English. "
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA...Breath...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-08-10 07:06:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
give me a mouse sprouting a human ear on its back any day of the week
-----------
Now that's art motherbithes!
I have to say that art has followed fad and fashion for as long art has been art. The two are inseperable. If it's not a sheep bobbing in a tank of piss it's salvador dali activly seeking controversy for fame and fortune. I guess I'm trying to say that you cannot have your cake and eat it, you cannot have wonderful, moving work and not have a vast quantity of stuff you hate. It's like Ubersite in a way. Or indeed human society.
As a former artist I'm surprised you've not come up against this before, although other artists I've known (ok, this bloke I used to work with called Gary) mentioned similar hatred of pretentious wankers, but still you know. Shit happens, then someone sticks it to the wall and calls it art. Doesn't justify knocking down the gallery or never seeing another exhibition ever again, you know?
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-10 01:48:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:23:45 (#)
Ranking: 2
I got about halfway through this and had to go get some aspirin.
I wish I were kidding.
See it's shit like this that "they" point to and we all know who "they" are whenever they want to cut arts funding.
I mean, I'm more into the painting and drawing types of art myself. I realize that I lack a certain sophistication in this area and I'm perfectly willing to say, take someone's word for it that Jackson Pollock is legitimate. I mean hell, maybe I just don't understand it. It's not really my thing but other people are into it so whatever you know.
but this kind of crap?
fuckbeans
My dogs made some "art" just this weekend on the back porch. You'd really think a rabbit would be quicker than a husky wouldn't you.
===============================================================
I was thinking much the same as I wrote this post. Yes, "they" use examples like these to cut arts funding; never mind that NYC would not be the tourist powerhouse it is without "art"; that Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Washington and Berlin thrive on the dollars that museums, theatres and galleries and playhouses pull in.
That art creates jobs just like the video-game industry, that art is a commodity to be bought and sold - witness Amazon.com - one of the first and most successful Internet storefronts. Books and music and movies are "art" in the EXACT same way that Michaelangelo's David is. The way Rodin and Kandinsky and Rembrant are.
When "they" cut art budgets and discourage art and music in the classroom, "they" are contributing to the decline of the culture, "they" are damaging the economy.
I wrote this in a mood of towering digust, because while "they" are cutting arts funding, "we" are championing every cutting edge (oh the irony when cutting edge is a flayed cat - true story) piece of underwhelming, nihilistic, UGLY piece of garbage we can find.
"We" are piling on opaque jargon that makes art look like mental masturbation. "We" poo-poo ANYTHING popular or middlebrow or - god forbid - accessible and make ourselves look just like the "intellectual elites" that "they" accuse us of being. "We" don't take their language and throw it right back at them by saying that art MAKES MONEY.
Money being such a dirty and nekulturny pursuit.
EVERY artist I've ever spoken to, and I know a few, wants to sell their work. The good ones do. Funnily enough, beauty still sells. Beautiful architecture still pulls in the crowds, a good narrative still draws us into the novel, and places like Stratford Ontario still go gangbusters when they toss off As You Like It.
But that's old hat, I guess. I'd hate to be an artist in the twenty-first century - at least in the West. It does seem like every image has been captured, that every story has been told, and every song sung. Maybe that's why artist's are willing to drop cinder blocks on rodents - THAT at least, has never been done before.
It also probably explains Bewitched, The Dukes Of Hazzard and Whatever-Other-Remade-From-A-Sitcom movie is in the theatres at the moment.
D'you know what my favourtite movie from last year was? Bride and Prejudice. It was fresh and funny, unsophisticated, unselfconscious and new. It had musical numbers, for the love of all that is holy.
Weirdly, it was based on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. You'd think it would be tired by now, but no.
It took an Indian director who didn't carry all the western been there, done that baggage to make that story all over again, and I loved it.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-10 00:20:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My mother has officially disowned me over this post.
She's never got over my becoming a computer programmer, and not the next Magaret Atwood.
Submitted by williamson (user info) at 2005-08-10 00:00:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I love art.
This is not art.
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2005-08-09 23:40:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-09 23:17:12 (#)
Ranking: 7.62 NATO
Of course, I live in San Francisco now. At night I dream of perching on a high building with a high-powered rifle and picking these dirtbags off one by one as they leave the Academy of Art College...
+_+_+_+_+_+
damn, i just pee'd a little
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-09 23:20:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:23:45 (#)
Ranking: 2
I got about halfway through this and had to go get some aspirin.
I wish I were kidding.
See it's shit like this that "they" point to and we all know who "they" are whenever they want to cut arts funding.
--
HAHAHAHAHA! Just read the above line.
Call me They. Jack They.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-09 23:18:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:04:47 (#)
Ranking: 2
To quote my dear Granddad, "Art is for queers."
--
THAT just made my day!
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-09 23:17:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Dude, I was living in Ottawa when 'Voices of Fire' hit the National Gallery, and you would not believe the shit-storm it ignited.
I hate fuckin wanna-be artistic types with no talent except one that allows them to get incredible grants from public funds.
Of course, I live in San Francisco now. At night I dream of perching on a high building with a high-powered rifle and picking these dirtbags off one by one as they leave the Academy of Art College...
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:55:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks, Feijuada.
Submitted by Feijuada (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:46:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ok, then, here you go.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:35:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Laser Buddha Story:
Aug. 9, 2005. 09:13 AM
Artist to create laser versions of destroyed Buddhas
LOS ANGELES - When the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan destroyed two 1,600-year-old Buddha statues lining Bamiyan Valley's soaring cliffs in 2001, the world shook with shock at the demise of such huge archaeological treasures.
Now, artist Hiro Yamagata plans to commemorate the towering Buddhas by projecting multicoloured laser images onto the clay cliffsides where the figures once stood.
"I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose — not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement," said the 58-year-old.
Fourteen laser systems will project 140 overlapping faceless "statues" sweeping four miles across Bamiyan's cliffs in neon shades of green, pink, orange, white and blue. Each image will continuously change colour and pattern. Powered by solar panels and windmills, the 125- to 175-foot-high squiggle-style, Day-Glo images — the same size as the original Buddhas — would be in stark contrast to the austere, rural valley below.
Completion of the $9-million project is set for June 2007, pending a green light from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, who first need to prove the 80- to 100-watt laser beams won't damage the cliffs.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:34:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Foetus Story:
Aug. 9, 2005. 02:12 PM
Chinese artist defends fetus artwork
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING — The Chinese artist who grafted a human fetus head onto the body of a bird defended it as art today after a visitor to the museum where it is on display in Switzerland filed a criminal complaint over the piece.
"It's precisely because I respect all life that I did this," said artist Xiao Yu. He said the bird and fetus "died because there was something wrong with them. I thought putting them together like this was a way for them to have another life."
Adrien de Riedmatten, 29, filed a complaint yesterday with the district attorney of Bern, Switzerland, calling for an investigation into the piece, which is on display at the Bern Art Museum.
"I want to know where this baby comes from and if it was killed for this work," de Riedmatten said. "We know about the problems of late-term abortions in China and we have the right to ask ourselves questions."
Swiss law enforcement authorities will investigate the complaint and decide whether to press charges.
Xiao said he bought the human fetus head in 1999 for a few hundred yuan (a few dozen U.S. dollars) from a man who was cleaning out a scientific exhibition hall. The glass bottle it came in had a handwritten sticker identifying it as a female specimen from the 1960s.
According to Xiao, it had no name or cause of death but bore a date, although he has lost the piece of paper and can't remember what it was.
"It was close to my birthdate though, I remember that because I thought it was coincidental," he said as he looked at a computer image of the piece in his Beijing high-rise apartment.
Xiao was born on April 22, 1965.
He said he assumed the fetus was miscarried after about six months, based on the development of its features and the condition of the head. He said it was unlikely to be an aborted fetus, because it predated China's "one child" birth control policy.
China launched the policy in the late 1970s limiting most urban couples to one child in an effort to slow the growth of its population, which officially hit 1.3 billion this year. Rural couples and some in cities are allowed two children.
Human rights group say Chinese officials sometimes force women to have abortions if they already have the maximum number of children.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:33:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
-2 for me, because I didn't realize those links wouldn't be visible.
Submitted by Feijuada (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:28:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Thanks for linking to a subscription site, and fuck bugmenot.com
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:24:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
There are three kinds of art:
And they all suck.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:23:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I got about halfway through this and had to go get some aspirin.
I wish I were kidding.
See it's shit like this that "they" point to and we all know who "they" are whenever they want to cut arts funding.
I mean, I'm more into the painting and drawing types of art myself. I realize that I lack a certain sophistication in this area and I'm perfectly willing to say, take someone's word for it that Jackson Pollock is legitimate. I mean hell, maybe I just don't understand it. It's not really my thing but other people are into it so whatever you know.
but this kind of crap?
fuckbeans
My dogs made some "art" just this weekend on the back porch. You'd really think a rabbit would be quicker than a husky wouldn't you.
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:14:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
There're three types of art:
-Fruitbowl
-Portrait
-Landscape.
Everything else is a rort.
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2005-08-09 21:04:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
To quote my dear Granddad, "Art is for queers."
Submitted by ih8u2man (user info) at 2005-08-09 20:57:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where the fuck do you
purchase foetus heads
pre-pickled? I've been
doing it on my own and
it's been horrible! lol.
still lol.
done.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-08-09 20:55:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
...
....
I, uh...
I think the foetus headed bird is actually kinda beautiful.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2005-08-09 20:53:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
meat dress...hmmm
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-08-09 20:47:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 laser buddha