I was stunned, shocked, embroiled in total disbelief at a recent art show.
The piece of "art" that claimed First Place was a portable beach chair with a canopy, wrapped in aluminum foil and some colored fabric along with a seat cushion.
It was vague to me what won the honor of a first place finish; the contraption itself or the photo that was displayed behind it.
This piece of "art" was a comment on global warming and rising sea levels, as the artist sat on this man-made piece of junk, mostly wrapped in non-biodegradable fabric and plastic and perhaps adding to the microplastic dilemma Which brings to mind a famous outbound motor company tried to merchandise their motor with a filter that captures microplastic particles as cooling water circulates the engine. The sell was that while boaters are running their motors they are helping to remove microplastic contaminants from waterways. The question that begs to be answered is what the consumer does with the used filters. The flimsy lawn chair is so trivial that begs the question: why even buy it in the first place. To help the GDP of some poor country I assume. Who knows, the artist might have picked it up at some recycling facility or might have re-purposed a piece of garbage that was found. I was too quick to judge. Sorry!
I get it that a lot of galleries and artists alike are answering to the clarion call of social and environmental issues to stay relevant. I don’t have a problem with that. But when the open call was not based on such themes and somehow such pieces popped up as winners then the verdicts were less than cogent. In fact it trivialized a good cause.
The point was that I felt absolutely resoundingly stupid. I failed to see the "art" aspect of the whole thing. It was a political statement perhaps, under the guise of environmental art that examines climate change in the context of human activities and global responsibilities.
This sort of reminded me of another First Prize winner at a local art show. It was a tent show and the adjudicator was the city mayor. A cropped photo of a raised fist captured that honor. It was a photograph with intrinsically bad quality. This was the time during a lot of social unrest and racial inequality issues. Again a feel good piece. A political statement. But "art", hell no !
A quick search on the web with words like "weird art", "absurd art" brings up hoards of examples of how dysfunctional some of these "art" insiders or authorities can become.
Artist's Feces is a piece by Piero Manzoni and was purported to be a satirical comment of the convoluted obsession with celebrities. Imagine paying good money to buy someone's gaga. Not for medicinal purpose as in fecal microbiota transplantation. That is done to help restore the microbiome.
Spatial Concept is a piece of red canvas with a knife slit in it. The artist Lucio Fontana claimed that his work abolished the traditional framework where the canvas was supposed to be painted on. By putting a knife through it, he freed himself from the shackles of art.
Who can forget about the banana duct-taped to a wall. The piece Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan insisted that the artist broke status quo in meaningful, irrelevant and controversial ways. Some fool paid 6 million dollars to help him destroy that status quo. I suppose I would have deemed those 6,000,000 bucks very meaningful if I was Mr. Cattelan.
So what is my beef! I’ve certainly stepped on a lot of toes.
Sour grapes? Perhaps!
But sorry, I just don't get it. Really.
