Observations about the universe, life, Lausanne and me

Friday, July 2, 2010

More MoMA

Please excuse the blurry picture, but I did not have much time to immortalise this classic situation:

Granny, Defiler of Art

It is a bit hard to see, but the old lady is resting her bag on a chair - she was searching for something in it.  Only the chair was part of an artwork - the sign to the right of it reads out the dictionary definition of the word chair.  I only had time to snap a quick picture before a horrified attendant chased her away. Now I wonder: does this mean the artist failed? If your artwork is mistaken for an everyday object, does it stop being art? Or did he succeed in some weird meta-commentary on how art is a reflection on reality, so mistaking one for the other validates his (for me) somewhat obscure point? Just goes to show I am better off as a physicist than an art critic.

Speaking of attendants, some artists hate them. Seriously. Take Bruce Nauman for example.

Nauman, professional dickhead

Briefly, he had this installation where seven voices recited the days of the week, continuously, out of fourteen speakers. The cacaphony was awful, and nobody stayed in the room more than a few minutes, if that.

The voices, they spoke to me...

Except the poor attendant. He was standing near a window, softly singing to himself. I didn't dare snap a photo of him, because he looked ready to snap and start murdering people with his bare hands...

1 comment:

  1. Nice assessment of Nauman. And I love the old lady finally putting the art to use.

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