Zach LarkinsHELP ME RHONDA
Okay, I need some help here. Will someone please explain art to me?
We have a piece of plywood painted white with a red stripe running down the middle of it hanging in Ottawa today. We, the taxpayers, got to spend 1.3 million dollars to obtain it. This is art?
Recently, here in town, we had an 'artist' sprinkle our riverfront parks with cornflakes so we could watch the seagulls eat them up. He didn't even do this himself. People volunteered to help him. This is art?
We have people who make dresses out of rotten meat and exhibit this as art. How so? Same with outfits made of condoms or a pot of urine on display as 'art'.
We are now in the throes of having human bodies on display for those among us who are more ghoulish than others. These are apparently real human bodies with various sections of their anatomy removed and parts of other bodies glued in their place. You are treated to the view of brains, hearts, ribs and lungs and eyes and this is art?
I have no idea where these bodies came from, but the show is touted as being composed of 'real human bodies'. Why anyone would spend money to see this exhibition is beyond me. And what about the indignity done to the deceased? Isn't that a crime in itself? Seems to me you can go to jail for pissing on someone's grave. At least that person got buried. It makes you think twice about leaving your body to science if that's what they're going to do to it. It's not only 'art', it's a 'learning experience'. Personally, I think it's sickening.
Whatever happened to the Norman Rockwell's and others of his ilk who produced what is recognizable as true art? You know, paintings of land, sea and sky scapes. Pictures of roads, bridges and tunnels. Cars, planes and trains. Fruit, flowers and portraits of people.
Art galleries are always busy asking for money because no one goes to them. I wonder why? When they condone crap like this you'd think they'd know people would stay away in droves. Why do my tax dollars go to help them out? I resent this strongly.
Someone please help me understand art. I seem to have lost the knack for knowing what it is and what it isn't. As Red Green said, "If I can do it, it ain't art."
We have a piece of plywood painted white with a red stripe running down the middle of it hanging in Ottawa today. We, the taxpayers, got to spend 1.3 million dollars to obtain it. This is art?
Recently, here in town, we had an 'artist' sprinkle our riverfront parks with cornflakes so we could watch the seagulls eat them up. He didn't even do this himself. People volunteered to help him. This is art?
We have people who make dresses out of rotten meat and exhibit this as art. How so? Same with outfits made of condoms or a pot of urine on display as 'art'.
We are now in the throes of having human bodies on display for those among us who are more ghoulish than others. These are apparently real human bodies with various sections of their anatomy removed and parts of other bodies glued in their place. You are treated to the view of brains, hearts, ribs and lungs and eyes and this is art?
I have no idea where these bodies came from, but the show is touted as being composed of 'real human bodies'. Why anyone would spend money to see this exhibition is beyond me. And what about the indignity done to the deceased? Isn't that a crime in itself? Seems to me you can go to jail for pissing on someone's grave. At least that person got buried. It makes you think twice about leaving your body to science if that's what they're going to do to it. It's not only 'art', it's a 'learning experience'. Personally, I think it's sickening.
Whatever happened to the Norman Rockwell's and others of his ilk who produced what is recognizable as true art? You know, paintings of land, sea and sky scapes. Pictures of roads, bridges and tunnels. Cars, planes and trains. Fruit, flowers and portraits of people.
Art galleries are always busy asking for money because no one goes to them. I wonder why? When they condone crap like this you'd think they'd know people would stay away in droves. Why do my tax dollars go to help them out? I resent this strongly.
Someone please help me understand art. I seem to have lost the knack for knowing what it is and what it isn't. As Red Green said, "If I can do it, it ain't art."
Since when should any government be supporting any artist? Did Da Vinci or van Gogh, or any of the old Masters have government grants to create their work?
I have often thought of painting a pile of crap and titling it "Second Hand Steak". Wonder how much I could get for it??
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So, for the most part I agree with you, at least on one level. On the other hand, I don't think that art is always meant to inspire wonder or beauty. Sometimes it's meant to provoke. Occasionally art has to go further than just presenting pretty pictures, it seems to me. Just how much further is certainly up for debate. Now, as for whether taxpayer money should go towards supporting it? That's a tough call. I personally think that the only art that should be taxpayer funded is art that is used to beautify or enhance public, taxpayer supported locations.
As for the Bodyworks display that utilizes real cadavers, I never even thought of that as art. To me, it seems more educational. They are not robbing graves for these exhibits, trust me. Many of the people displayed consented to it before death. I personally would love to see the exhibit, as I find it fascinating. I toyed with the idea of going into a career in biology for a while, before chemistry drove me from it. I realize that the display has been controversial, but I've never totally understood why.....
Good post, it raises some interesting questions.
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Oh dear..I hate to be the dissenter, but Da Vinci and Van Gogh did have subsidies--from royalty, the Catholic church, and wealthy patrons, in that order. Composers were in the same boat.
That meant that they had to produce what whoever was holding the pursestrings wanted first, to get up enough scratch to do their own thing.
That still holds true today, even with grants and subsidies; the artist must submit his or her work for review before they get any money.
The real culprits are whoever approved the art in question, when it gets down to it. My guess would be that there aren't many artists out there applying (for just that reason) and the money has to be used or lost.
Kind of a no-win situation that started out with good intentions...
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
And, Winston, the human body is, indeed, a magnificent study in science. Please, feel free to go to your local funeral home or morgue and ask to play with the dead. Or enter a class on anatomy, with no background and see how far you get. It's a fascinating study, to be sure, but the average person isn't ready for such graphic visions. Nor do they need to see a display of anyones insides under the guise of "art". Art and music should interest and inspire the better things. Not perversion. If you have a fascination with dead guts, maybe you should seek therapy... soon...
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
Clearly you have the undeniable qualifications to handle such a graphic display of the human body, while the rest of us drooling plebeians would doubtless swoon at the merest sight. I appreciate that you have our best interests at heart. Should I ever be rendered mad by the horrors that await at the Bodyworks display, I will rue the day that I failed to heed your words. Of course, who's to say that I am not already mad, obsessed as I am with "dead guts" and all? My course history in biology, anatomy and zoology notwithstanding, thank you for helping me confront my psychosis. I am a sick, sick man. But, I'm also not a Republican, so I suppose my horrific state was predictable and inevitable....
Seriously, SL, listen to yourself sometime. What "perversions" are you referring to? I am not aware of this display inspiring any. Hold the mirror of your argument up to yourself and see what reflects back. What does that display make you think of? It makes me think of biology and wonder at the human form. From the sounds of it, something else is springing to your mind. For shame!
Winston, on your best day, you'll never be able to hold a candle to to my long dead dog. Maybe if you stop pretending to be things you aren't you can look in a mirror without embarassment. But I doubt it. If you really had the background you claim, you'd know a little more about human nature and not sound like such an idiot. I really feel sorry for you....
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
If you are so ignorant as to equate a scientific exhibit with molesting bodies in a morgue, then I am the last person you need to worry about being in therapy. Unlike yourself, I do not assume that everyone is warped and twisted. I believe you are the one who began suggesting that I required psychological help. I DO think that it is slightly twisted to see perversion in every corner, which you seem to do. Far be it from me to tell you how to see the world. You are welcome to your views.
By the way, the fact that you feel the need to make personal attacks against me in such a ridiculous manner is telling. Why, exactly, are you so upset? Your response is not exactly what I would call rational, considering that this is an argument that you began in the first place. And what, exactly, am I pretending to be? All I've ever claimed to be is a human being with my own opinion. My crime, apparently, is having one different from yours. Thanks so much for your pity. The knowledge of your sympathy is a candle to light my way in my life of darkness.
I do look in the mirror without embarrassment (most of the time anyway). I have a loving wife and good friends and family. I have things that I enjoy, a curious mind, and a heart unencumbered by hate and derision. Unlike some, I have the ability to acknowledge that I am not always right and that differences of opinion exist. Perhaps none of this is much by your standards, but I get by with it. Does it please you to hold others in contempt? It would seem as though it does. If that is what you enjoy then all the more power to you. May it bring you great pleasure.
At any rate, a pleasant evening to you (or should I wish you an unpleasant, hateful evening? It would suit your temperament better). Enjoy it as you wallow in your delusions.
The people here that think this is art are sick in the head. But, if they truly want to see that filth then maybe they should practice on themselves.
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You are ignorant in that you have HOPE that you can respectfully disagree with an old hag who is so lost in her own stupidity (and age, no doubt going crazy) that she has some absurd beliefs.
One of which is that smoking has no health risks and it's all a 'myth', another, that the great barrier reef is dying of natural causes (forget all the crap were dumping into that part of the ocean, it's completely natural).
Haha, don't get me started on her views of homosexuals, hispanics, europeans and whatever else that takes her fancy. Just an ooooooold woman ranting and raving, probably angry at god or something for being infertile (just guessing, she probably has some sort of proverbial rock in her shoe that makes her such a nut).
@D. Armenta
Thats a point very well made, governments often support artists, it isn't anything new. As always people get angry, people who think they can legislate peoples beliefs. Look at the Sydney Opera House, it sure had its fair share of controversy from the likes of Youranters, bradish and other conservative austrlian cousins and now it's a bloody symbol fo the country.
Far right wingers (and left wingers) have a habit of trying to stump progress, same people who were slave owners in the past, give it twenty years and when homosexuals are acceppted for what they are - normal people (everyone has their own outlook on life, thats normal, don't have to agree with it of course), and right wingers are trying to keep another minority from being accepted into society you'll look back here and see, it's just history repeating itself.
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Or their forcing universities to idolize their own people.
It's pretty funny, they complain that liberals don't get stung as hard when they get blow jobs and the like.
I'm no expert on the matter and I don't particularly find left wing politics any good, but still, if someone is going to claim they are going to teach good morals and respectablity through law they should at least hold up to what they want to legislate.
there's no excuse for "bad" art! I'm sorry buddy, but we were raised with the masters, like Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael and even great women artist's like Georgia O'Keefe, Margaretta Peale Grandma Moses, as well as female scultures like Harriet Hosmer...
And lemme tell ya, Norman Rockwell was a staple in our house! We knew who Goethe and Matisse were by the time each of us were six years old...
We were also exposed to great works of sculture from the Greco-Roman era all the way up to contemporary Western sculptures by Russell and Remington...
But even Pollock, with his slap-dash paintings were considered a tad too "off-beat" for my European parents!
We were taken to museums all over the country whenever we went on vacation or into the "big smoke" (city)...
In school as well as at home, my parents had "quizzes" on the Grand Masters of art and music...
They would hold up a picture and we would have to guess who had painted it...Or they would start to play a classical piece of music, and we were required to know the composer by name, the name of the piece and when it was written!
I have seen what some people consider "art" and it's sickening! At the San Diego Museum of ASt the other day, they had a showing by this young gal named Christina Oatman, wanna take a guess at what it was!?
Bits of wheat tied together with colored ribbon, all stanging up around a casket decorated with macaroni shells and glitter!
*Rolls eyes*
Omfg...I thought to myself, and I payed $3.95 for this!?? Luckily the museum has a fantastic Baroque Gallery with the Masters in it, and that's where I spent my $3.95!
LOL
I tell ya buddy, what passes for "art" these days, a six year old could do better at!
Great post, and I completely agree...Like Christo? Draping bridges and landmarks and shit with pieces of colored cloth and calling it "modern expressionism"?
Gimme a break!
Take care,
Nick
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Two things
1: My understanding is the the poeple whose bodies were used gave consent for this kind of use and relaised that they were likely to be used for this kind of thing. So the ethical questions there are really not related too much to the individuals who had their bodies used. Perspnally I'd much rather have my body used for this than a number of other scenarios.
2. The thing about art is - the Camera changed everything. Now art is about exploring other ways to make meaning. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Some times it works for some but not others. Personally I find realism witohut meaning pleasent but dull, exploration of aesthetic boring and pretencious unless extraordinary, and LOVE engaging work like the woman with seagulls and cornflakes, and Banksy.
Anyway. We all pay taxes, and we like some places they go, not others. Just life.
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First, I wasn't aware that the people who are shown in the Bodyworks Exhibit volunteered for the job. Thank you, whoever, for providing that information. On the other hand, if they did it to further education, why make such a spectacle of yourself? Why not just donate your body to science and have medical students pore over you to do examinations, dissections, etc.? They are the ones who would truly be interested. I think this exhibit is being held over week after week because no one wants to see it and the 'artist' is not making enough money.
It is a well known fact that the masters all had their patrons back in the day. There is nothing wrong with that and maybe they did have to do some work they didn't agree with to make enough money to eat another day. However, I can't imagine a patron telling an 'artist' to hang a Jesus figure in a bottle of urine. The idiot who sprinkled cornflakes along our fiverfront was quite put out that he had to pay for the flakes out of pocket. We got left with all the seagull poop when it was over. I can't see patronizing something like that either.
Nick, as expected, you come up with fine, defined arguments and tell it like it is. I grew up much the same way. Maybe I can't define art, but I can define what it isn't..
Don, wise choice on the call of your employer. There are enough ghouls out there who would scoff a body, humiliate it just for the fun of it, and then run home to Mummy and Daddy to protect them from the long arm of the law. And you were right too, at that time, to consider them as just cargo. Cold perhaps, but that's the way you have to look at it.
Ahmed, you're so far out to lunch, you're not worth my time and trouble.
Brenton, yes, art is supposed to provoke debate but some of this stuff is just out and out trash. It infuriates people and the 'artist' gets to go on the cocktail circuit telling everyone, "If I have to explain art to you......" Rubbish. Even Warhol's Campbell Soup Can had more integrety than having people drop cornflakes on the grass. You're right, we all pay taxes and like where some of it goes and not other places. But when you see just how much of our tax money goes to sponsoring this crap, maybe you'd take a step back too and say enough is way too much.
Thank you all for the comments. Very much appreciated.
Compelled Christian
the people who have done these atrocities which the Japonese soldiers did to prisoners of war in Changi in Singaporeduring world war two, did the same things with men and women...and if you look in the Tiger Balm gardens in Singapore you can see the museum displays of those atrocities. So we are going backwards rather than forwards morally.And I hope I have helped you in this way. For those who do such things are as God says in the Bible thrown away the truth for the lie and have become morally dead, and corrupted in their souls (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deutronomy,Daniel, Romans, Acts, Thessalonians, and Revelations).
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Yet I continue, why? Because it's fun teasing satirists
hahaha, given how much of our tax dollars go to toilet seats and war nobody misses a few bucks going to art, at least thats supposed to be useful. You can rant and rave all you want, but you're simply trying to sidestep the core issue, which is money is wasted on things you don't think it's wasted on, and are trying to create an ultimate dictation of what is waste and what isn't. You don't like the idea that it's all relative to peoples opinions and not set in stone.
In the end democracy wins, and if these artists do what they do it means they have support for what they do. I don't know if you're as bent as bradish, you could always blame it on liberals if you are
youranter
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And by work I mean working towards a bright future, NOT installing airconditioners in homes because I saw too much in myself when I was young and thought that I was going to become a lawyer without even trying
Democracy probably stings you folks hard, especially you, when you're stuck on two ends of the fence, only reason you lean towards the right is because your first book on politics was pro right wing.
Then you find you've befriended an absoloute crack pot. haha, she denies passive smoking has health risks and thinks pretty much all environmental problems are natural (acid rain, amazon rainforest dying etc) and god knows what else she thinks (I haven't pushed her far enough but I wouldn't be surpried if she thought the rapture was com'n tomorrow so no one need worry about planet earth).
See, you might think you've got it tough (or had it tough, etc), hence you have some divine right to be a bit of a tight arse with your beliefs. Heck, maybe you don't even think that, it could just be something that built you up as you are now. You just need to take one BIG FUCKING step back and look at whats happening with the rest of the world. YOu don't have it tough, you don't have i tnearly as tough as you think. I promise you the worst you've ever experienced in life does not compare to a tiny fraction of the worst at least a million people feel every day because of the narrowmindedness of people such as yourself
Take a big step back, take a deep breath, and see just why people disagree with your oh so perfect logic, with an open mind and heart. You'll really make some progress then
Ahmed, I'm curious... didn't you say not long ago that you were studying physics? Between bragging about what you learned in high school, remember? Now you're talking about studying law? Either you're as brilliant and scatterbrained as they come, or you have so little going for yourself that you have to lie and brag to make yourself look good. News Flash! It's not working. If you could say something important, or have an opinion other than bashing, maybe someone would take you seriously.
Abe Lincoln once said it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Maybe you should take his advice...?
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No personal attacks, I promise! Just a few points:
Ever seen the de Medici portraits? Perfect example of "prettying up" a basically ugly family by an artist who was under duress to do so--because they were paying. That's not artistic freedom; that's doing what you have to do to eat and buy paint and canvas so you can express yourself.
As far as the church was concerned--where do you think they got all that money? Or royalty theirs, for that matter? Your analogy of modern commissions isn't really germaine in this case. The church and royalty got their money from their subjects, just as our government gets art subsidies from a portion of our taxes. Like our government, the church and royalty were expected to invest their contributed or levied monies in things that were for the edification of or in the best interests of their subjects.
I think we can all agree that wasn't always the case.
In any instance, you can't please everyone when it comes to the arts. As evidenced here, some people like the concepts Ranter mentioned and some hate them. Surely there have been some modern, government subsidized works that you like?
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I liken it to music. I don't like rap and I'll never spend a dime going to a rap concert. Some people don't like rock and roll and wouldn't be caught dead at a Who concert. Fine. To each, his own. I do object to my tax dollar going to support a local symphony orchestra that I have no interest in and will never see. The artsy-fartsy crowd tells us how valuable all this stuff is to our society, and they may be right. But why are they not shelling out some cash to keep these enterprises afloat? They love to impress us with their wealth, but they don't seem very willing to spend very much of it. If I want or believe in something, I'll gladly pay to see it continue. I don't know why I'm forced to support something I have no interest in.