Saturday 17 January 2015

IT'S CLEVER, BUT...

Contemporary art is such a testing thing... You look, you try to pocket your prejudices and open your mind, hoping to comprehend: neither wanting to to be fooled into pretending to see the Emperor's New Clothes, nor wanting to be the first to giggle at his nakedness in case there is a greater profundity to the nudity than at first meets the eye...

Such moments are not uncommon at the wonderful Venice art gallery, Punta della Dogana, the triangular-shaped building that separates the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, Venice...  


The gallery, part of the Palazzo Grassi art collection is officially described...
As a center for contemporary art, the former customs house of the city presents exhibitions of works from the Pinault Collection, the institution that supported the transition of this masterpiece of architecture, so emblematic for the city, from its eminently commercial function to port of contemporary art and ideal venue to share it with the world.
Currently on show is Untitled by David Hammons (2008). 


The catalogue explains...
Hammons covers the canvas using garbage bags, as if the painting needed to be obscured in order to work its magic and thusly function as an art object. Ironic reference to the mechanisms of how art is perceived, this work actually evokes one of the artist’s main themes and inspirations: the street, street people, street life.
'Thusly'? Hmmm...

Rudyard Kipling's 'Conundrum of the Workshops'...
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art ?"
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.

The tale is as old as the Eden Tree - and new as the new-cut tooth -
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art ?" 

Click here to read the whole poem

2 comments:

Andy Latham said...

It seems to me that creating art is easy....I mean all you have to do is create anything at all and proclaim it as an exploration of what art can be, and therefore by definition it must be art.

No need to be a craftsman, no need to have a grand idea, all you need is spin.

Jenny Woolf said...

I often think Kipling is underrated. My rule of thumb is that the quality of the art is in inverse proportion to the length and complexity of the blurb.