RapierFugue
Posts: 4740
Joined: 3/16/2006
From: London, England
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Aileen1968
It looks like Bigfoot ate a hand grenade.
lol!
Modern art's not for everyone, I must admit, and there's lots of it I don't like. I could cheerfully drown Tracy Emin, for example.
One silly story; I went to the Tate Modern a while back and liked some of it, (and hated quite a bit too), and loved some of it (the sculpture most of all, and the textile works), but there was this one piece that caused me some puzzlement and then derision: it was an “installation” (I don't like that word I must say – what’s wrong with “piece” or “stuff” or “work”?) of a famous (I’d never heard of him but then I'm not an expert) modern art chappy’s workbench, after 18 months of working on other pieces ... so it was an old, battered wooden workbench, onto which was strewn all manner of detritus, in a similar fashion to Emin’s famous “bed” piece. So there’s a saw, there’s a cheap biro, there's an empty Pot Noodle container, there’s some (somewhat dubious looking it must be said) used tissues, etc. Loads of it. Piles of it – the net effect was much as if someone had taken 3 bin-bags full of domestic trash and tipped it out over the bench.
Ok, fair enough. Not my cup of tea, or coffee, but WTF. It’s art. You either like it or you don't (and I most certainly did not), and I applaud most modern art more than I do some fusty old darkened Holbein, for example, but what caught my eye was that there was a security guard stood right next to the thing, clearly guarding it with a vengeance. This struck me as odd, as the security guards at the TM are generally a laid-back lot, and don't tend to stand over pieces, but just let people get on with enjoying them by standing in a corner.
Suffused with curiosity, I politely asked the guard why he was stood protecting this piece, and not any others. His answer amazed and shocked me not a little, as he wearily (it must have been the 500th time that day he’d been asked I reckon) said “the artist doesn't want anything moved or changed in position coz it might alter the context and meaning of the installation”.
I looked at the bench, absolutely heaving with crapola of every shape, hue, texture and material, all completely randomly scattered, then looked back at him, then back at the bench, then at him. Bench, him, bench, him. My mouth worked as I tried to frame any other question except “are you taking the fucking piss mate?”, but he was clearly used to this reaction too; with a surprisingly economical roll of his eyes, and the merest hint of a shrug (not even a hundredth of a decent Gallic shrug – call it a centi-Gaul in measurement terms), he managed to convey the strong feeling of “the artist’s a fucking loon if you ask me, which no-one has. Some mothers do ‘ave em, eh? Still, it’s a living”.
I thanked him for his time and information, and moved to the next room.
Oh and PS: I saw from the plate next to it that the piece was valued at £75,000. Yes, I know.
< Message edited by RapierFugue -- 1/21/2011 5:45:57 PM >
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La Grande Petite Morte: an orgasm captured - 
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