Not surprisingly the artist has been forced to speak out saying it's the most hate mail he's ever received in his life over an art piece.
Disagreeing with art is one thing, but man that's just so Calgary. Growing up I've always wanted to see our city as better than it is I think. If there was one city in Canada where an art piece could bring out the dummy conservativism to that level, buoyed by a hack, conservative local paper that does nothing but fan the old white guy flames, unfortunately myself and likely most people would pick Calgary, and yet again they'd be right.
And before local conservatives jump in and start defending anything - No, I'm not talking about disliking the art or the money or being fiscally responsible. I'm talking about the complete and utter craziness of the ability of art pieces and fancy bridges to take over every waking moment of local media/citizens for weeks, sometimes months at a time.
And in this case basically harassing a known, well respected New York artist with hate mail to the point where he has to publicly comment on it. We're progressive in some ways, but just so Calgary in too many ways. It's embarrassing.
The word you're looking for is philistinism. And yes, it's a hallmark of Calgary.
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Seems obvious, but what this and the blue ring have in common are they're done for highways. Maybe we need a different approach to highway beautification - perhaps landscaping? Or maybe we should simply divert the funds into public art for pedestrian spaces and parks?
I would love to see good examples of highway beautification anywhere that we could emulate (other than the Glenmore fish, and stuff like the Arche de Triomphe). Otherwise, maybe we should accept that a highway will look about as a good as it can merely through billboard restrictions.
OMG, I think you have stumbled onto something amazing! Nenshi should push to build an Arc de Triomphe just so we can see the desgins and ensuing comedy. Maybe there could be panels for Notley and Trudeau (to secure other government funding), but overall that would be amazing to watch the outrage and anger!
As a general comment on post-modern art discussion: anything can be called art now. Literally anything. ... If you can't defend something without referring to it being 'art', then you can't defend it.
Piero Manzoni "exhibited" his own sh..t in tin cans and even sold some of it at Sotheby's for a lot of money. I believe there is some of this sh..t is still available for purchase today, although its authenticity could be compromised, so you can't be sure if you're buying real artist's sh..t or someone's else's regular sh..t. At the time, some art critics proclaimed Manzoni's sh..t to be modern art designed to do what art is supposed to do - provoke, encourage discussion, protest against establishment etc. Other critics called it simply "sh..t in a can". As it always happens, the former called the latter populists, dinosaurs and retrogrades incapable of understanding the true meaning of art...
This example has proven unequivocally that anything can be labeled and sold as "art" in the world where critics, academic committees and gallery owners define its meaning as they wish.
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You looking for someone to make a statute of you up on your high horse, Jayswin?
This person convinced the city to pay several hundred thousands of dollars to leave construction debris on the side of the highway and attempted to call it art. He deserves the hate mail. And the reaction has nothing to do with "conservatives" or "hicks" or whatever other group you want to feel superior to today. There's no shortage of examples in other cities where people reacted negatively to literal garbage being passed off as art.
No he doesn't. Don't have to like it but sending someone hate mail over it is pretty petty. It's sad that people spend the time and energy to be that negative.
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-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
OMG, I think you have stumbled onto something amazing! Nenshi should push to build an Arc de Triomphe just so we can see the desgins and ensuing comedy. Maybe there could be panels for Notley and Trudeau (to secure other government funding), but overall that would be amazing to watch the outrage and anger!
Can we get this just with Nenshi on the horse?
Right in front of City Hall. Or maybe we could make it on an arch that the C-Train has to pass under. Yes...
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The most interesting thing is that this and the blue ring have almost done what they are suppose to do; spark conversation. Still today I will be in a car with someone heading out of the City and the blue ring is brought up when seen.
I agree but disagree. Art good or bad should create discussion about the art, its meaning, how it was made, what its about, its history.
But when the discussion is that its lazy or stupid or dumb or has a unbelievable price tag then its not discussion about the art.
Even more so with this newest boondoggle, when some people are offended about a city purchased piece of art, that's the wrong discussion.
Just for that alone, the fact that the Blackfoot and Treaty 7 are actually offended by the art should lead to the entire art selection committee to be thrown out of city hall with a box of their belongings and the process for purchasing art to be revamped.
Everything around this purchase and even the blue ring of death says that the people doing the selection are out of touch.
And absolutely not, the artist shouldn't be getting the hate mail that he got, even though his initial defense was to simply say that we don't get it and we're stupid. The people that should be getting hate mail all work within the walls of city hall.
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Piero Manzoni "exhibited" his own sh..t in tin cans and even sold some of it at Sotheby's for a lot of money. I believe there is some of this sh..t is still available for purchase today, although its authenticity could be compromised, so you can't be sure if you're buying real artist's sh..t or someone's else's regular sh..t. At the time, some art critics proclaimed Manzoni's sh..t to be modern art designed to do what art is supposed to do - provoke, encourage discussion, protest against establishment etc. Other critics called it simply "sh..t in a can". As it always happens, the former called the latter populists, dinosaurs and retrogrades incapable of understanding the true meaning of art...
This example has proven unequivocally that anything can be labeled and sold as "art" in the world where critics, academic committees and gallery owners define its meaning as they wish.
These were my favs from Art Toronto last year...
The buckets were 35k. The hanging stool was sold so we'll never know.
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Piero Manzoni "exhibited" his own sh..t in tin cans and even sold some of it at Sotheby's for a lot of money. I believe there is some of this sh..t is still available for purchase today, although its authenticity could be compromised, so you can't be sure if you're buying real artist's sh..t or someone's else's regular sh..t. At the time, some art critics proclaimed Manzoni's sh..t to be modern art designed to do what art is supposed to do - provoke, encourage discussion, protest against establishment etc. Other critics called it simply "sh..t in a can". As it always happens, the former called the latter populists, dinosaurs and retrogrades incapable of understanding the true meaning of art...
Not exactly, the work (there's several cans) is called "Merda d'Artista" or "Artists Sh*t", but it's unknown what is actually in the cans. (Someone who worked with Manzoni claims it's actually plaster. Not really the point of course. Or is it...)
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This example has proven unequivocally that anything can be labeled and sold as "art" in the world where critics, academic committees and gallery owners define its meaning as they wish.
I know people say that and that kind of was Manzonis point, but ultimately "Merda d'Artista" is a really famous and interesting piece of art and I would absolutely buy a can if I had some millions just lying around like some people do. (They're not that expensive relatively speaking, Tate Museum bought one for about £20k, which got a ridiculously outraged reaction considering what a petty sum that is in the category of internationally famous art pieces.)
That's always of the problem with creating something that tries to comment on itself.
I think some of the discussion on the work itself is absolutely hilarious and a successful strike against the ridiculousness of the art scene, but the fact that the cans actually sold for the price of their weight in gold (the original price) is to me more a comment on a lot of people with too much money finding the joke really funny and interesting.
A lot of the art buying scene is just people with more money than they know what to do with. That does crazy things to the prices, but it really doesn't tell much about the art scene other than "some people in the world have more money than they know what to do with".
Last edited by Itse; 08-06-2017 at 05:41 PM.
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Yeah, it's weird. If you had a chance to buy it for a million dollars today it would be the best investment you ever made. It's a neat lesson in context, history and symbolism. Painted at any other time and any other location by any other painter it's just a dumb joke.
Modern art is far from my thing, I tend to find its largely ridiculous.
At least if you make something that looks like something I can appreciate the effort, talent and skill that went into it.
Modern art is like any art: the vast majority of it is between bad and mediocre, but some of it is pretty good stuff.
The problem with modern art for me is that most people who claim to like it tend to claim all modern art is good/great art, which is obviously impossible. Those people make me not want to go see (or hear, or what ever the medium is) anything labeled as "modern art", because they make it impossible to have a real discussion about it.
A lot of the time artists are making ridiculous, dumb or really terrible and downright dangerous points. Some points and whole topics are done to death. Sometimes the work in itself is just so obtuse or badly done that it makes it unnecessarily hard for the audience to grasp the point. There's no inherent value in "making the audience work for it". And as you say, some artists are just lazy and/or untalented. It's IMO a big problem with all "high art" in general. Many supposedly high-literature award-winning books I've read are formulaic crap, many symphonies and operas are just generic lounge/pop music (classical) or bad ambient (modern). Etc.
I want to be able to talk about that without somebody saying "you don't get it". If you disagree with me, don't tell me "I don't get it", tell me what I'm not getting or tell me why the point I didn't like was worth making.
Then again, sometimes I think it's all just insider humour. I mean, just look at this description/explanation of "Merde d'Artiste" from pieromanzoni.org:
Spoiler!
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The link between anality and art, as the equation of excrements with gold, is a leitmotiv of the psychoanalytic movement (and Carl G. Jung could have been a point of reference for Manzoni).
Manzoni's main innovation to this topic is a reflection on the role of the artist's body in contemporary art.
The tautological closure of Manzoni's Achrome (an empty space without lines or colours) and the disappearance of the artwork as a literal object (as in the case of the hidden Lines), produce a specular self-sufficiency of the artist's body.
Dispossessed of his ancient heroic status of producer and artificer after the loss of the artwork, the artist find a place of discharge for the projection of his person, replacing, with his own body, the painting and the sculpture.
The series of Artist's #### (sold at the then-current price of gold), the Artist's Breath ("Fiato d'artista", balloons filled with Manzoni's breath) and the only planned containers of Artist's Blood ("Sangue d'artista") are the results of a process of expropriation and regeneration of the artist's corporeality.
Manzoni offers his own body as an artwork, and the vestiges of the transfigured body become precious relics.
I mean, that's just... That has to be satire? Maybe what I'm not getting is that it's all this one massive super elaborate joke.
Nothing's better than the story of Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire.
One of the first cause célèbres of the populist Alberta flexing it's muscle at the federal level, Reform party Philistines loudly complain about the National Gallery purchasing the epic Newman piece for $1.8 million. Never is there a topic that a populist politician isn't an expert in with an equal measure of certainty and outrage in their opinion. Reformers and their backers (many evidently coming out of the woodwork in this thread), loudly mocked those so called experts, the national gallery curators, what with their PhDs in art history, for wasting taxpayer money.
Record scratch:
Fast forward to the present day. Voice of fire is valued at over $50 million, is considered one of the jewels of the collection, and a major piece of Newman's catalogue who's one of the to ten imminent modernist artists of the 50s-60s movement.
Maybe there is no moral to this story. But maybe, just maybe, some reflection rather than knee jerking would benefit some of the more strident among us.
