Idiots

Before...

After...

Image Source

An Article About Art That I Kinda Agree With (Even Though I Have Somewhat Different Tastes Than This Guy)

An interesting article to check out:

"Urban Intellectual Fodder":

There is a certain kind of art made here in America for a lofty but banal purpose: to enliven the contemporary educated mind.
[...]
It does not expand the borders of art or wreck the tyranny of the possible or enlarge our hungry little minds.
[...]
It is art born of attitude, not passion. It is art that postures but doesn't grip. It is art created by those who are more passionate about a career in art than about art itself.
[...]
Primarily, this is art that thinks about art. Art of the intellect, not the heart. Art done to bring us the smart, not the art.
The artists of Urban Intellectual Fodder act like art critics doing art -- they're better about their art than with it, better on their art than in it. Their art is done to show their smarts, and that's primarily what one gets from their art.

It may not occur to someone a bit younger than me, but there *are* reasons why I prefer The Stones to Arcade Fire, why I don't read current "literature" (as opposed to "genre" fiction), and why I'll wait for the DVD...

Artist at Work

It was all gone about 10 minutes later. She didn't seem to mind. She'd make Keats proud. She makes me proud.

Dead Hearts

Last month I posted a couple of clips of Arthur Ganson's kinetic sculpture. Here's a stunning music video/short film (take your pick) featuring another of Ganson's creations, Machine with Wishbone.

I'm not a particularly artsy-fartsy guy, but I so get this... The entire piece is beautiful, but the horse at 4:50... Wow.

Music and direction by Dead Man's Bones, set direction by Jed Hathaway. Seriously, check this out.

Arthur Ganson

Until quite recently I'd never heard of kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson. I think, now, that he may be my favorite "artist." I use the quote marks here only because I don't think "art" is a big enough term to contain what he does.

You'll rarely see/hear me blathering about art and meaning and all that stuff, but when I look at Ganson's pieces I'm utterly mesmerized and feel as though I'm as close as humanly possible to gazing at meaning itself. (Yeah, I'm blathering.)

If you're not familiar with what Ganson does, you should check out his YouTube site. Here are a couple of clips. Maybe you'll get what I'm on about.

Each scrap is activated in two places. The mind is very acute and recognizes instantly the manner in which energy flows through a system. Here, the center point always leads the peripheral point. This is vitally important in allowing the scrap to feel as if it is flying.

"This is vitally important in allowing the scrap to feel as if it is flying." Damn. I realize that not everybody looks at the world the same way I do, but, but... Damn...

If you find that philosophically depressing (I don't--what's the point!?), the next one may cheer you up a bit. It's a variation on a theme, but it strikes me as looking at things a bit more optimistically.

In this machine, the chair is passive and all motion is due to interference by the cat. The large disk at the back serves to both counterbalance the arm and give more mass to the chair itself. The motion of the chair is complex and will never repeat.

I think it was Susan who pointed me to Ganson's stuff, but I can't remember when/where/how/etc.

See also Arthur Ganson's Machines (official website).

A Piece of Public Art Near My Place

At the Art Museum

This past Sunday I went with my family to the Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum. There was a big exhibition of young, local artists from all over the city. It must have been quite a thrill for these young artists to have their work displayed on the same walls where frequently hang the works of Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, and the like.

As (I believe) with most museums, the taking of photographs is generally frowned upon. I had to surreptitiously snap the ones below with my cell phone, so I apologize for the poor quality. You can click any of the photos to get a larger view.

As the images below make clear, young Japanese artists have many artistic influences, and follow many of the great artistic "schools." It's quite common for most of these young artists to work together in one large room while honing their craft. Not being especially artistically inclined myself, and having no formal training in the fine arts or art history, it's beyond me to pinpoint the specific influences of each of the artistic groupings you see below. Perhaps you, gentle readers, can help me?








Here's one of the young artists hamming it up for the camera:


And here's a sampling of her work:

Eating Sweet Potatoes after Digging Them Up
and Roasting Them over an Open Fire
Apparently one of the young artists (I think his name was Escher...) was so highly regarded that they put a number of his works in their own room just down the hall.


Maybe next week we'll go check out this Escher fellow...

Props

Blogging friend Susan's ArtSpark Theatre is "Blog of Note" for January 8. Check it out.

Art for Art's Sake

A few years back, in a discussion thread on a site that I can't remember, someone was discussing an art show in which one of the pieces was a bathroom urinal. and was wondering whether a urinal could really be considered a work of "art." I've never been much interested in art "theory" myself, so most of the discussion was either too boring or too complicated (same thing really, I guess) for me to bother with. Being a helpful sort of guy by nature, though, I eventually piped in with the suggestion that, while it's quite possible for a urinal to be a work of art, as soon as someone takes a piss in it it's just a urinal.

Related to the above (in fact, damn near the same thing), I recall a heated conversation I once had with a good friend who was very interested in the latest fashion trends, and would often argue that fashion was a form of art. Probably the only thing I find more annoying than a discussion on art theory is a discussion about fashion. Or so I thought up until that point. This was a discussion about art theory and fashion. Anyway, my friend, growing somewhat exasperated with me (unfashionable, non-artistic rube that I am), finally asked me if I thought it were possible for a coat made out of meat to be a work of art. (Really, it makes me wonder sometimes. Urinals, coats made out of meat--can these people not think of better examples to make their points? I can imagine one of these art theory/fashion-world types working in an appliance store and, in a spiel on the efficiency of gas stoves, managing to drop Hitler's name.) "A coat made out of meat?" I replied. "Sure, that could be art. Until someone put it on."