Art Attack

[davidn]

I'm bound to offend at least a few art students with this post, but I've been thinking about this ever since going to that exhibition in London.

I think that Marla Olmstead's site epitomises what is wrong with the state of art at the moment. She is a four year old that paints the normal confused mass of blobs and squiggles that we all did at that age when allowed access to poster paint. The only difference with her is that her "artwork" is featured in major exhibitions and sold at exorbitant prices to people with more money than sense. See the site for some vomit-inducing quotations from art experts regarding her work - I should dig out my old masterpieces from playgroup, I'd make a fortune.

£3000 please.

A lot of the artwork at the exhibition wasn't much better. There were the usual vague squiggles and pictures featuring red, blue and yellow boxes, but one artist that particularly caught my attention specialised in gigantic wall-size frames full of multicoloured stripes. I think his name was David Grayson, but I can't be certain. They were all called "Untitled" followed by a random number, and priced in excess of three thousand pounds.

Shortly after the first semester of this year began, there was an "art school" series that Whitney and I watched, which featured such celebrities as Ulrika Jonsson as well as some other anonymous has-beens. The episode that most sticks in my mind was the "sculpture" one, where the two teams were given a heap of disparate items and instructed to create works of art from them.

I had thought sculpture required some talent and visualisation of creating something while chipping away bits of rock from a large one, and this was most certainly not it. The first team chose a mattress as their main object, while the other had a filing cabinet.

When the hosts came back, the mattress team had pulled all the stuffing out of their mattress, strewn some hair across it and stabbed it repeatedly with some knives. I can't remember what point they were trying to make, as the highlight came shortly later when the attention moved to the other team.

"We've filled the filing cabinet with beans," they announced happily, in a scene worryingly parallel to something out of Weebl and Bob. Indeed they had - the filing cabinet had had beans and polystyrene liberally splashed over the front. And I was shocked to see the art critic that had been roped into doing the programme launch into how it was an impressive obscurist impression of post-humanitarian empathy, or some such nonsense. It wasn't. It was a filing cabinet full of beans, and therefore a complete waste of time (and beans).

It's appalling, really.

Comments

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Marla Olmstead's work is not like any other four year olds work. why it is defined as art is simply this, art is expression and what she is doing is allowing you to enter the mind of a 4 y/o and how she perceives things. I think her pictures are fantastic, although since I don'e have the money I would never go for an original, but would not mind a print.

I have workedin a nursery before and nothing like that has was ever shown to me.

[iluena.livejournal.com]

ah but surely then, that every four year old is allowing you to access their minds eye. after all, not every four year old will see things the same, they are little individuals. therefore, every child that age who expresses themselves in an 'artistic' way should be appreciated.
and of course it is all in the eye of the beholder.