Thursday, May 31, 2012

YES, BUT IS IT ART?





Two hanging creations, two different concepts: which one would you take time to study and admire?  Which one is art?






Yesterday on the lovely blog Plum Siena, Annie presented a photo essay:
a piece called Creative Mind: Joana Vasconcelos.  First up was a piece called ‘Marilyn, 2011’, a 9 ft. pair of high heels constructed of cooking pots and their lids. They are sort of fun – like a Claes Oldenburg sculpture with a culinary twist.  The next one up, however, gave me a case of the “Whywouldyas.”  It’s a chandelier, ‘A Novia (the bride), 2001’, displayed in 2005 for the Venice Bienale.
Check the "Creative Mind" above to see  more pictures of this piece.

I just had to wince at this. As a chandelier it looks like many others: the kicker lies in the material used. When I tell you what it is will you wince too? I wonder if the creator (for this piece I’d hardly call her an artist) lay in bed one night and thought “Eureka! I’ll make a huge chandelier. All out of tampons!”  That’s correct: tampons.  Whywouldya?  It may be creative, but it surely isn’t art.



 

Coincidently, today I was made aware of the work of the industrial designer Thomas Heatherwick. The piece above was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust for their London headquarters, and is made of 142,000 glass spheres (someone counted every one?) suspended on tensile steel wires. I find it beautiful and very creative.  I might get a crick in my neck, but I'd love to stand and look up, up, up at it. I wonder if you can see it from the higher floors. This is art.

And that
(Said John)
Is
That.                         





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