Friday, April 6, 2007

Your Art, My Art


The Vancouver Art Gallery has lizards and other strange small creatures on display today. It is part of a new "installation."


I have some advice for you, Art Lovers. As soon as you hear the word, "installation," get on your palimino and head off in the opposite direction as fast as those 4 legs'll carry you.


Installations and video works are among the greatest hoaxes of the modern art world.


I remember vividly wandering through the wondrous halls of the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art a few years ago. Much on display was wonderful. Then I entered a very large room where a crowd of people were encircling something.


I muscled my way into the inner layers of the crowd and this is what I found.


Hundreds of stuffed toy poodle dogs, black and standing about knee high, were arranged in dozens of concentric circles, all focused on a $5 toy baby doll lying on its back in the centre of the circle.


The people were silent. They were giving serious consideration to this drek.


I started to laugh. Then I howled. Then I said something real friendly, like, "You folks are idiots," and I moved on to the next room.


What the art galleries of the world need these days is more living creatures. Not lizards and spiders, but curators and administrators who can tell the difference between exciting new art and lazy, conceptual put-ons.


When it comes to Art, with a very big A, the emperor has no clothes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

David,

Before I got to the end of your piece, I was thinking, The Emperor . . . but, of course.

I was at The MoMA this past summer looking at the monochrome paintings and thinking the exact same thing -- but with a bit of clever text explaining the painting we all stand in awe.

Mo.

David Berner said...

I highly recommend Tom Wolfe's book, "The Painted Word," a thorough ans hilarious exposure of this madness.

David Berner said...

I highly recommend Tom Wolfe's book, "The Painted Word," a thorough ans hilarious exposure of this madness.

Robert W. said...

But as long as "artists" keep on getting paid for such drek then they will keep churning it out.

B.S. rules the world, David, B.S. rules the world!