Calling all Sokals!
I know this is a case of chasing easy marks, but still, I laughed.
Two teenagers visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and they came away…underwhelmed:
The teenagers, Kevin Nguyen, 16, and TJ Khayatan, 17, both of San Jose, had been left scratching their heads at the simplicity of some of the museum’s exhibits, including two stuffed animals on a blanket.
“Is this really what you call art?” Kevin said in an interview over the weekend.
TJ added, “We looked at it and we were like, ‘This is pretty easy. We could make this ourselves.’ ”
Cue the long-standing first reaction to a Pollack: “My five year old could do better!”
Nguyen and Khayatan, however, did the hard thing: put their ambition to the test. Theirs was no instant success:
Inspired during their visit on May 21, they experimented with putting a jacket on the floor and then a baseball cap, but neither drew attention.
Like any driven artist, the two persisted, until, the breakthrough!
Kevin then placed his Burberry glasses on the floor beneath a placard describing the theme of the gallery. He said neither he nor TJ did anything to influence museum visitors, such as standing around and looking at the glasses.
The linked article has a picture of what came next…;-)
Not that the creators could fully appreciate their success. One does have to sacrifice for art:
Within about three minutes, people appeared to be viewing their handiwork as bona fide art, though Kevin said that without his glasses, he could not see what was happening too well.
Give SFMOMA credit, though, for a sense of humor about the matter:
That would be a reference to this, I believe (as does the NY Times…)
Anyway — good times! And nothing to do with the ferret headed weasel (a sphinx for our times!), the senator from the north country, nor the lady whose nomination must not be acknowledged. So I guess this makes it another politics free open-thread. Have at it.
*Well. Actually…they are, in exactly the sense that Magritte argued that his pipe was not.
Image: Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, between 1638 and 1639.
Jim Kakalios
When he was about ten or twelve years old, we brought our son to the SFMOMA. After about an hour of viewing large scales paintings of white on white, and others of this ilk, he pronounced his judgement. He said, in a aggravated tone: “This stuff is seriously stupid!” This has become the go to phrase in our family ever since.
Most of the work that one would deem ‘seriously stupid’ has a justification, but one needs to read a full essay on the piece’s background in order to appreciate what it is trying to say. And one can argue that if one needs a written explanation of what you are looking at, then something has gone wrong in the experience.
Major Major Major Major
Man, that cracked me up.
My husband was actually at SFMOMA that day. He didn’t see the glasses, but he did text me afterwards to ask if Warhol was an artist. I responded “he was a troll. So maybe?”
Elizabelle
Brilliant kids.
I hope they grow up to be REAL journalists. Or even satirists. We needs ’em. Well done, Kevin and TJ.
Percysowner
Years ago my husband and I visited a Modern Art Museum that was displaying the 12 Stations of the Cross by Barnett Newman. As we walked in we both said, “Someone had a lot of masking tape”. As we walked out a couple was walking in and they said “Wow, he used a lot of masking tape”. We laughed about it for quite a while. You can see the display here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCMOGyEZ-9c
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
A lot of critics tend to divide Warhol’s work into “before he was shot” and “after he was shot.” He definitely seemed to lose interest in creating original work after he was shot.
redshirt
I don’t know art but I do know anything in the medium of velvet is a classic.
Ultraviolet Thunder
That’s a Banksy move. He’d create pieces of art and sneak them into museums. Some of them are hilarious.
canuckistani
For decades, I sneered at modern jazz. Anything from 1940 on just sounded like self-indulgent wankery to me, and I was quite sure that anyone who pretended to like it was a pretentious fool. And then one day, I was sorting through CD’s to throw out and on a whim, I put on a Bill Evans CD that a friend had given me many years before. And it was like I had been shot with a diamond bullet, right in the middle of my forehead. I got it, and I saw why it was beautiful and interesting and I have never looked back.
Since then, no matter how stupid art might look to me, I now assume that the fault is mine, and if I just give it time and some effort, I will see what’s there that I hadn’t seen before.
Keith P.
@Major Major Major Major: The best part is the guy on the ground with the camera trying to get that perfect shot.
Major Major Major Major
The guy in front of me in security tried to carry on a bottle of wine and was very taken aback that he couldn’t. Who gets into the Pre line and doesn’t know you can’t carry on liquids?
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: Guess he’ll just have to chug the whole bottle. What could possibly go wrong?
JPL
@Ultraviolet Thunder: that was awesome. My favorite Banksy story was when he sold original art work for 25 dollars in Central Park.
JCJ
So that is a painting of a pair of glasses?
Amaranthine RBG
@canuckistani:
Some art is difficult and does reward careful consideration.
But, some art is just crap.
PaulWartenberg2016
The true criteria for a work of art:
does it make the viewer think? does it make the viewer contemplate his/her place in the universe?
if yes, then art.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Got the day off today, so I’m busting out my new pastel set. I have drawing and pastel classes starting in three weeks, but I have the materials now and I’m impatient and they’re so darned pretty and it looks like so much fun. Will my work be any good? Of course not — I have no idea what I’m doing. But there are a lot of people who never let that stop them, so there you are.
I’d just leave my glasses on the floor, but then I’d probably step on them.
divF
@PaulWartenberg2016:
From Annie Hall.
Major Major Major Major
@Amaranthine RBG: 90% of everything is crap.
Gin & Tonic
@canuckistani: Well, to be fair, Bill Evans was a genius.
JPL
@Amaranthine RBG: Some people can’t tell the difference.
Major Major Major Major
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: hey, you never know. Have fun!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@JPL:
It’s easy to lose patience with pranksters. But Banksy is always very clever, and usually has a valid social point. Unlike most people who paint on other people’s walls in the dead of night.
I really like his reworkings of thrift shop paintings. In one case he bought one, repainted it Banksy style and re-donated it to the thrift, which sold it for serious dough.
Luthe
I wandered through the sculpture garden at the Louvre once and was so engrossed in interpreting everything as art I took pictures of the closed (table) umbrellas flapping in the wind. I thought they were supposed to be soldiers.
To be fair, they greatly resembled the statues at the Korean War Memorial…
Germy Shoemangler
Let’s ask a serious art collector:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-w9VrMBPGM
(It’s Always Sunny)
Mnemosyne
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
It’s not making bad art, it’s learning how to use the media. Worry about making it look good once you figure out how the materials work.
Miss Bianca
@Luthe: I remember being so struck by how clean the streets were in Toronto, as opposed to American cities, that I started actively hunting for garbage on the street. The only place I found it was in front of the art museum, so I figured it had to be an exhibit – courtesy of American artist, Unknown.
divF
@divF:
Brain fart. It’s from Play It Again, Sam. A major lapse, since the scene was filmed in the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.
patroclus
The glasses exhibit’s use of negative space was executed in a seriously entropic fashion. It had clean lines and good color contrast. It’s use of the interactive dynamic whereby viewers could peer both at and through the lens contained a duopic concept with an underlying “through the looking glass” philosophy. It brought to mind both the hermeneutic origin of human reliance on corrective lenses and the hardships faced by those humans who never had access to them throughout the ages. It focused on the interplay of sensual perception and the Kantian ideal typical goal of all human interaction. Is what one “sees” the real truth or must one analyze the historicity of the observer (or the observer of the observer)? It challenges the viewer to resolve all these philosophical conundrums for themselves. It is art in its purest sense.
Roger Moore
@Jim Kakalios:
Or to have been following the art world for a long time so that you already know the gist of the essay without reading it. That’s really the problem with the “seriously stupid” art: it’s not that it’s meaningless but that it’s total inside baseball. That’s why insiders have such a different reaction to it from casual observers. The insiders get the references, so it’s meaningful to them, even as it’s completely opaque to people who haven’t been steeped in the art world for most of their lives.
That said, some of the stuff that it’s easy to see as total insider nonsense can still speak to people who don’t get all the references. I have a friend who is not a serious art hound but who really loves Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. They speak to her on some deep level even though they’re exactly the kind of thing I’d expect to see categorized as “seriously stupid”.
Mustang Bobby
My first trip to Art Basel on Miami Beach I was so bored that I stopped to read the label on a fire extinguisher hanging on one of the columns. Someone came up to me and started reading it, too, and I was sorely tempted to say something like, “Wow, they really caught the reality of the meaning of the shortness of life…” But I chickened out.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Czech out ;) some of sculptor David Černy‘s work around Prague. I am particularly fond of his equestrian Sv. Vaclav (St. Wenceslas) on the far left of the linked gallery, which hangs in one of the internal walking galleries just off Wenceslas Square.
Germy Shoemangler
@Miss Bianca: Why are the streets of some countries so free of litter? While there is garbage thrown everywhere in the U.S.
Is it because other countries invest in cleanup crews to keep their cities clean? Or is it a cultural thing? That there is more shame in littering in some places more than others?
I’ve read that the authorities in Singapore will arrest people for tossing a gum wrapper.
Major Major Major Major
I was always a fan of the KLF. Their award for worst artist of the year stunt was brilliant.
Germy Shoemangler
@Roger Moore: Is it the same with some architecture? Starchitects trying to outdo each other in outrageousness, while the buildings themselves do little for the human spirit, or make people get lost trying to find the entrance, or difficult for cleaning and maintenance?
Uncle Cosmo
@Amaranthine RBG: FTR the generalization of Sturgeon’s Law quantifies “some” as 90%.
canuckistani
If I were on the spot for an essay or a seminar, I could easily run with “the glasses lost on the floor remind us that we cannot even see the tools required to see art without possessing the tools required to see art”.
I think they accidentally did something quite clever. Whereas a hat on the floor is just a hat.
Miss Bianca
@patroclus: That is some authentic art frontier gibberish there. Awesome!
smith
@patroclus: You get it! You really really get it!
Major Major Major Major
@Uncle Cosmo: ahem.
@Germy Shoemangler: they definitely have the shame thing going in Japan. In some places they make you sort the trash into an absurd number of categories (over 10 iirc) and put them out in clear bags with your name and address on them, so your neighbors can return them to you if you did it wrong.
Roger Moore
@Germy Shoemangler:
Mostly because chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. OTOH, I was not especially impressed with the cleanliness of the streets in Singapore. I didn’t think they were anything special compared to the area where I live. Some of that may be because there are serious worries about water quality in our runoff- it doesn’t take long to get to the beach- and regular street sweeping is part of the strategy to combat water pollution.
Amaranthine RBG
@Uncle Cosmo:
Major Quattro beat you to it:
@Major Major Major Major:
ruemara
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: What sort of pastels? Chalk or oil? Art is the inner expressed outwardly, so do it for yourself. I love pastel work anyway.
I read about those kids. Most modern art is not immediately relevant. Some is just stupid, but I think it’s more of a thoughtful exercise than 16 year olds should be put through. I confess to not going to modern art stuff when I went to art school, unless the professor forced me for my edification. Now, I have more patience for it.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Germy Shoemangler:
I visit Germany frequently. There, I think the streets are relatively clean because there are pedestrians so people actually interact with the environment. Here in Detroit streets are just pavement for cars and any BK bag flung from the window disappears at 75 MPH.
Luthe
@ruemara: I like *modern* art. It’s post-modernism that confuses me. Magritte and Rothko make more sense to me than shit like a shark in formaldehyde or trash littered around a gallery.
OTOH, there was a great piece at the Met recently which consisted of a classically trained singer asking visitors of they would like a song. If the visitor said yes, the singer would perform a short piece in the middle of the gallery. It was very cool.
Origuy
@Major Major Major Major:
Three years ago I went to Moscow and met up with a friend who was there visiting her mother. We had planned to fly back together. While I fly regularly, it had been years for her. We got on the plane at Sheremetyevo and flew to JFK. As usual, they had us claim our bags at Customs and take them to be checked through to SFO. She dropped off her checked bag and then they found a bottle of vodka in her carryon. Fortunately, the checked bag was still sitting there, so she was able to put the vodka in it. However, they never found the bottle of “holy water” from the sacred spring at the Sergeiv Posad Monastery that was also in her carryon.
Luthe
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Unfortunately, your theory is belied by the streets of New York, Boston, San Francisco, etc. Plenty of pedestrians and yet, plenty of trash.
Germy Shoemangler
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Yes, the car culture and the anonymity of tossing trash from a speeding vehicle. Same person would be embarrassed to do it while walking (or maybe not).
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@ruemara: Soft pastels (chalk, I suppose — not oil).
I actually painted a tree at sunset near a streetlight a few days ago that was very happy with — I thought I did a good job capturing the forms, and the soft evening light hitting the trunk and the branches. Too bad it was only 20% of a painting I was trying to do of a bridge. The rest of the painting was a disaster.
Oh well.
Germy Shoemangler
@Luthe: And no street cleaners. Do the “clean” cities employ uniformed people who go around with big wheeled barrels, brooms and pointy sticks? That was a meme for old 1930s American films: the grouchy guy (usually cousin to the dogcatcher) who goes around picking up trash.
Uncle Cosmo
@Amaranthine RBG: But he failed to note the provenance. For all we know he just guessed at the number.
PS Pardon the fuck out of me for not reading the whole thread before posting. Whenever I take the time to do the Due (Diligence, that is), the Whole Sick Crew here has moved on to oohing & aahing over woozle or pootie pictures or drooling over recipes life-threatening to diabetics before I can let fly my bon mot du fil. From now on I’m going to follow Lazarus Long’s advice to “get your first shot off fast” & screw the consequences.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo: +1 for the “V.” reference.
Major Major Major Major
@Uncle Cosmo: meow.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I cleared out my Inbox.
VICTORIOUS AND COVERED IN GLORY!!1!
Germy Shoemangler
@Uncle Cosmo:
Amazing coincidence you painted the perfect portrait of us on this modern art thread.
EDIT: they’re upstairs arguing about Brown’s Clinton endorsement.
Miss Bianca
@Ultraviolet Thunder: And I was, of course, coming from Detroit when I went to Toronto.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Miss Bianca:
The 401 is a bear. I did that all winter, back and forth. The most boring highways of a half dozen countries I’ve driven.
Gin & Tonic
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I dunno, the 402 from London to Sarnia is pretty awful, too. I’m surprised there aren’t more deaths on that road from sheer ennui.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Gin & Tonic:
I take the 402 between Sarnia/Port Huron and London because it has less traffic and the Immigration agents are less stringent. Plus the cool windmills. Communist free power generation.
Roger Moore
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
It’s also important to have a place to put the trash. Even people who don’t want to litter may wind up littering if there aren’t any convenient trash cans to dump their stuff in, or if the ones that are there are overflowing so stuff spills out of them. The same local governments that are too cash-strapped to sweep their streets regularly* are unlikely to spend a lot of money putting out trash cans on every busy street corner and picking up the trash on a regular schedule. It’s one more effect of constant failure to fund government adequately.
*Though they’re happy to put up street sweeping signs so they can fine people who don’t move their cars.
bystander
Celles ci ne sont pas les lunettes.
Denali
I once put a frame around a hole in the living room ceiling which revealed a pipe from the upstairs shower. I entitled it “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Best piece of art I ever created.
On the other hand, I detest the work of Jeff Koons.
delk
The glasses are like Angie Dickinson’s Isotoner Glove in Dressed to Kill.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Germy Shoemangler: My recollection is that there was lots of people doing “street cleaning” and “garbage can emptying” when we were in Japan and when I was on vacation in Greece. (There’d be obviously overworked Greek women out with little brooms, sweeping away the dust and picking up the cigarette butts, etc.).
It’s both. There’s the cultural norm, especially in Japan, that keeping common places tidy is worth doing, and there were people employed to make sure the public trash cans weren’t overflowing, that trash that did somehow end up on the street got picked up, etc. A big problem in the US, it seems to me, is that even if people try to do the right thing by putting stuff in trash cans, they fill up too quickly, get emptied too slowly, and the wind catches stuff (like the ubiquitous plastic bags) and blows it around all over. It’s at that point that more and more people stop caring (“Yes sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope Under that garbage.”) and it gets out of hand.
Cheers,
Scott.
Germy Shoemangler
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You’re right. In my town I see trash cans but they are overflowing. Budget cuts.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Or, what Roger Moore said above.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who think’s there is some conspiracy that is resulting in my Genius posts always being a little (or a lot) late.)
Ajabu
@canuckistani:
Pro Tip:
Randy Weston (last living genius of jazz piano, still touring at 90 years old
and my mentor & hero.)
Listen to “The Storyteller” first and then go backwards in his vast catalog.
You’re welcome.
Roger Moore
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The partial solution my city adopted was to use solar powered trash compactors instead of regular trash cans. The cost of trash cans is dominated by having to pay somebody to go around emptying them. The compactors only have to be emptied about once a week instead of once a day, so their higher initial cost pays for itself fairly quickly.
StringOnAStick
@canuckistani: I’ve been a jazz fan forever, and it is fun how that twists and turns. My husband and I got into playing gypsy jazz a number of years ago, so that’s what we’ve been searching out for live performance. We went to see the Hot Club of Detroit 3 years ago and were treated to gypsy jazz stirred up with very “out” acid jazz, it was absolutely mind blowingly good! There were a few people who wanted to hear the 1930’s version of gypsy jazz but most of the audience was as up for it as we were.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic:
KS in MA
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: That there is one of the world’s best reasons to make art. Maybe THE best. Hope you had fun!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Ultraviolet Thunder: and @Gin & Tonic:
You guys have clearly never driven I29 & 75 from Fargo to Winnipeg.
redshirt
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Athens was pretty filthy, but there were also small armies of people picking up trash. A make work project, it seems.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
This is a very good observation. I think it applies to a lot of art, broadly speaking. Difficult examples from the visual arts are sometimes dismissed because we make snap judgments. It would be easy to do the same for literature,
which I can’t make sense of. Ditto some avant-garde music, even leaving 4’33” aside. And movies–I like Tarkovsky, for example, but I’ve fallen asleep during some viewings of his movies. But I’m okay leaving serious judgments to the experts.
JAFD
Was once at an exhibition of Duane Hanson’s sculptures at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After viewing the figures, tried standing as motionless as possible in a likely place, waiting to see if anyone would mistake me for one of the sculptures, and their reactions if they did. Worth trying if you ever get the chance ;-)
canuckistani
@Ajabu:
I’m on it! Thanks!