Accidental Cleanliness Destroys $1.1m Art Installation

[Koroviev]

Never have been a big fan of latter-day hipster art. How much "art" can stake its claim to existence on irony?

I'd tell you, but it's a number you've probably never heard of.

Do it. My mind hasn't been blown in a while.

Eleventy...

Batrillion...

Thousand.

Yeah.

*BOOM*

And to think (with the remaining fragments of my mind) that hipsters have the capability to reproduce (too mainstream?).

I think they reproduce through mytosis.

One individual can only contain so much pretentious douchebaggery, so when the individual reaches it's peak, it splits off into another individual.

That would probably explain why they all look alike.

Of course, it's the most fundamental law of Hipsterology!

Captcha: Derian R provides...hmm, the hipsters are watching. That sounds like a Hipster name.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I posted this to my facebook as a comment on a post about this article, and I think it bears repeating here:

Truth is, though, this isn't the real art movement of our time. You want to see that, get on Membase sometime; those image macros, the exploitable faces? /That/ is the art movement of my generation. Also take a look at Deviant Art sometime if you want to see examples of other legitimately contemporary art movements. Stuff like the piece that that cleaning lady destroyed is something that makes a few people a lot of money, while the rest of us laugh at how gullible people are; it's not what historians are going to look at 100 years from now and say "this is the art movement that defined the generation."

What do you guys think? Am I right, or am I off my rocker? Personally, I can't see how rage faces /aren't/ the primary artistic movement of my generation, with smaller movements also being represented on sites like Deviant Art.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

...

(also £1.1 million? are you kidding me? that means someone decided the cheap wood trellis and dried paint was worth more than all the property on my Street. Reign your neck in.)

Art is more or less about the name attached than anything else.

OT: this only makes me think of how many plumbers looked at duchamps fountain and said I could fix that right up.

Well you see... hold on, I'll let this guy explain:

See, the difference between dadaists like Duchamp and the ridiculous modern artists we have now is that the Dadaists knew they were making crap. The real "art" of their work was convincing people that, for example, a turd in a can was somehow worth something; the Emperor's New Clothes effect, if you will. The current crop somehow thinks their crappy art objects are actually worth the insane amounts they charge. There's absolutely no irony to the movement anymore, and as a result, it truly falls flat; flat enough that it's surprising we haven't had cleaning ladies doing stuff like this before.

This. One million times this. I will defend Duchamp signing a urinal because he did it to show how pretentious the art world had become, by first showing off his exhibit under a pseudonym, to which it was ridiculed and ignored, and then unveiling it under his own (really famous and respected) name, to which all the art critics and artists praised it. Unfortunately no one gets the irony, and it has changed nothing.

In fact Duchamps fountain no longer exists, the most likely cause of it's loss is that someone mistook it for rubbish in storage and threw it out. Sound familiar? My word... it's almost poetically so.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I laughed so hard. Then I cried, because I saw what the art became, still not caring enough to see into modern art enough to believe that the discordant mess in my garage might be artistic, rather than just really messy.

Though, this does bring to mind something interesting. If they put a facsimile of the cleaning lady using a mop or broom to push the thing out of existence, then there could be an entire insightful presences about the piece, concerning the nature of art, and the nature of "why is there so much attention drawn to this singular piece?" displays.

Modern art: made from rubbish, into rubbish.

 

[newwiseman]

It's like throwing away a Jackson Pollock because your kid did the same thing with their baby food.

I support this, I'm just not a fan of subjective art, for example the empty paint bucket on a stool. I don't consider it art when anyone can do it.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Never have been a big fan of latter-day hipster art. How much "art" can stake its claim to existence on irony?

I'd tell you, but it's a number you've probably never heard of.

Do it. My mind hasn't been blown in a while.

Eleventy...

Batrillion...

Thousand.

Yeah.

*BOOM*

And to think (with the remaining fragments of my mind) that hipsters have the capability to reproduce (too mainstream?).

I think they reproduce through mytosis.

One individual can only contain so much pretentious douchebaggery, so when the individual reaches it's peak, it splits off into another individual.

That would probably explain why they all look alike.

Of course, it's the most fundamental law of Hipsterology!

Captcha: Derian R provides...hmm, the hipsters are watching. That sounds like a Hipster name.

Shit, they're on to us. Quick, protect yourself, wear fashionable clothing and listen to music everyone knows about.

 

[nitat]

"Art isn't what you create but is how you present it"
=my vision of "modern art".

 

[SecretAlienMan]

Moral of the the story: "Modern Art" is nothing more than a stain upon society.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

...

(also £1.1 million? are you kidding me? that means someone decided the cheap wood trellis and dried paint was worth more than all the property on my Street. Reign your neck in.)

Art is more or less about the name attached than anything else.

OT: this only makes me think of how many plumbers looked at duchamps fountain and said I could fix that right up.

Well you see... hold on, I'll let this guy explain:

See, the difference between dadaists like Duchamp and the ridiculous modern artists we have now is that the Dadaists knew they were making crap. The real "art" of their work was convincing people that, for example, a turd in a can was somehow worth something; the Emperor's New Clothes effect, if you will. The current crop somehow thinks their crappy art objects are actually worth the insane amounts they charge. There's absolutely no irony to the movement anymore, and as a result, it truly falls flat; flat enough that it's surprising we haven't had cleaning ladies doing stuff like this before.

This. One million times this. I will defend Duchamp signing a urinal because he did it to show how pretentious the art world had become, by first showing off his exhibit under a pseudonym, to which it was ridiculed and ignored, and then unveiling it under his own (really famous and respected) name, to which all the art critics and artists praised it. Unfortunately no one gets the irony, and it has changed nothing.

In fact Duchamps fountain no longer exists, the most likely cause of it's loss is that someone mistook it for rubbish in storage and threw it out. Sound familiar? My word... it's almost poetically so.

Aw, Fountain is lost? I hope whoever got it installed it someplace as an actual urinal, instead of just throwing it out. From what I understand, it was a perfectly functional urinal that Duchamp stole from a construction site.

 

[emeraldrafael]

snip

I undrestand all that, but what I mean is you could create anything and without a name you'd never sell. one of the best examples I can think of is this damien hirst guy (who did the new RHCP CD cover). He produced something worth in the range of 25K, then took out a loan for a million and bought it back just to establish his name in the art world.

...

I guess another good way to say it is if you took away da vinci's name from his self portrait, and you didnt know who that was, you'd think it was just a random old guy that someone did as a portrait for 300 bucks to pick up money, like caricaturists do.

 

[RagTagBand]

I'm going to choose to believe that the cleaner is a sort of post-post-modernist and this was a satirical act of performance. It's more fun that way.

Also, I can see exactly why the cleaner might mistake the rubber trough underneath as not being part of the...*ahem*...art. It looks completely out of place (to my peasants eyes anyway) and it looks exactly like someone has dumped something underneath the sculpture.

If you took Michael Angelo's "David", but put a bucket full of piss between his legs, I wouldn't be surprised if someone came along and removed it either*



*NOTE : I am not comparing this incorrectly assembled fence to "David", I'm using it as an example of two things out of place.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I posted this to my facebook as a comment on a post about this article, and I think it bears repeating here:

Truth is, though, this isn't the real art movement of our time. You want to see that, get on Membase sometime; those image macros, the exploitable faces? /That/ is the art movement of my generation. Also take a look at Deviant Art sometime if you want to see examples of other legitimately contemporary art movements. Stuff like the piece that that cleaning lady destroyed is something that makes a few people a lot of money, while the rest of us laugh at how gullible people are; it's not what historians are going to look at 100 years from now and say "this is the art movement that defined the generation."

What do you guys think? Am I right, or am I off my rocker? Personally, I can't see how rage faces /aren't/ the primary artistic movement of my generation, with smaller movements also being represented on sites like Deviant Art.

I think this statement has a lot of promise. When people look back at the art of our time, sure, a lot of academics will talk about the post-modern and post-post modern twaddle that sits in the Tate until someone accidentally throws it in the bin, but the artistic style that is seen to define our generation will not be taken from there, but from Courage Wolf, Lolcats, and rubbish Microsoft Paint "Forever Alone" comics. These are the things that students will study when looking at the Art of the 2000's, The same way we relegate periods to the "expressionists", the "classical" artists, the "Gothic Art" we will be seen as the time when "Internet Art" exploded, when the artists became everyone.

In 100 years time you will get Art students doing projects on art at the turn of the millenium, and some will choose to study and recreate the post-modern stuff, but others will choose the light hearted internet memes. Recreating their own on their pirated editions of "AdobePhotoshop CS 65", trying to capture that "Microsoft Paint" aesthetic, and understand the pop. culture references that drive them (Was this Justin Bieber some sort of Eco-terrorist? Why did everyone hate him?).

And although it is likely that these images will be forgotten, I don't think that will happen. What is uploaded to the internet stays here, pretty much forever. I found a review today for Call Of Duty 2, while googling "Stunning Visuals". Yeah, that hasn't aged well, but it means our crappy memes won't be forgotten in a hurry, they are all stored in a cobwebby serverfarm somewhere, just waiting for someone to punch the correct keywords into the search engine.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Honestly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened before. Or maybe it was...

I think it has

Art that gets mistaken for ordinary mess deserves to get accidentally cleaned up

 

[Formica Archonis]

That is worth $1.1 Million!?

BRB gluing a bunch of sticks together so I can get myself set for life.

Holy crap, it looks like Space Ghost started sucking on the gas pipes again. "It's symbolic, Moltar. Things don't always have to do things. Now help me plug it into the wall."

Spoiler: For the curious.

 

[Viper1265]

I notice a lot of post saying that modern art is indistinguishable from garbage, well hear this, a garbage bag filled with air and tied off was awarded $47,000 of taxpayer money.

''It's not a bag of rubbish, it's a rubbish bag. The medium is clearly portrayed: It says it is a bag, air, and a twisted top.'' http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/barry.html

Also, I would hardly call the piece damaged by the cleaning lady irreparable if all she did was wipe the paint off the bin. In my opinion modern art should only be worth the sum of its materials + how nice it would look in my house and I both weep for and laugh at those who find paint haphazardly splashed onto a canvas, mundane household objects, or even a literal can of shit to be worth thousands of dollars.

 

[Megawat22]

I'm reminded of the scene in "How Not To Live Your Life" where the main character (who does tours in an art gallery for a job) was showing a girl he was dating some of the "art". As he's going around showing her them she asks what he thinks of them, "Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. This one is quite profound." the last piece of art being a picture of a bull pooing.
This Modern art thing is stupid in my eyes. But I'm quite... blunt? I'm not sure. I don't look for meaning in things. If I like art, it's because I think it looks nice, not because it makes me wonder about the blight of impoverished Portuguese cats.
Not that all modern art looks like crap, some if it can look alright as small decorative pieces or paintings. But I'm not paying more than £30 for a picture of a bunch of multi-coloured shapes. I could get a toddler to do that and I'd only have to tell him what really happens if you stay up past 7pm.
And I'm certain this cleaning lady is some sort of vigilante, fighting pretentious artists and their work around the world. And I fully support her, so much so that I shall become a janitor in an art museum and aid her in her quest. It'd also help me be more like the Janitor from Scrubs, I've already got the crazy down, now I just need to grow an extra 7ft. And start referring to myself as Janitor.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I posted this to my facebook as a comment on a post about this article, and I think it bears repeating here:

Truth is, though, this isn't the real art movement of our time. You want to see that, get on Membase sometime; those image macros, the exploitable faces? /That/ is the art movement of my generation. Also take a look at Deviant Art sometime if you want to see examples of other legitimately contemporary art movements. Stuff like the piece that that cleaning lady destroyed is something that makes a few people a lot of money, while the rest of us laugh at how gullible people are; it's not what historians are going to look at 100 years from now and say "this is the art movement that defined the generation."

What do you guys think? Am I right, or am I off my rocker? Personally, I can't see how rage faces /aren't/ the primary artistic movement of my generation, with smaller movements also being represented on sites like Deviant Art.

I think this statement has a lot of promise. When people look back at the art of our time, sure, a lot of academics will talk about the post-modern and post-post modern twaddle that sits in the Tate until someone accidentally throws it in the bin, but the artistic style that is seen to define our generation will not be taken from there, but from Courage Wolf, Lolcats, and rubbish Microsoft Paint "Forever Alone" comics. These are the things that students will study when looking at the Art of the 2000's, The same way we relegate periods to the "expressionists", the "classical" artists, the "Gothic Art" we will be seen as the time when "Internet Art" exploded, when the artists became everyone.

In 100 years time you will get Art students doing projects on art at the turn of the millenium, and some will choose to study and recreate the post-modern stuff, but others will choose the light hearted internet memes. Recreating their own on their pirated editions of "AdobePhotoshop CS 65", trying to capture that "Microsoft Paint" aesthetic, and understand the pop. culture references that drive them (Was this Justin Bieber some sort of Eco-terrorist? Why did everyone hate him?).

And although it is likely that these images will be forgotten, I don't think that will happen. What is uploaded to the internet stays here, pretty much forever. I found a review today for Call Of Duty 2, while googling "Stunning Visuals". Yeah, that hasn't aged well, but it means our crappy memes won't be forgotten in a hurry, they are all stored in a cobwebby serverfarm somewhere, just waiting for someone to punch the correct keywords into the search engine.

My point exactly. While I think the internet is less permanent than printed media is (Geocities, anyone?) It would just about take the destruction of the entire World Wide Web to completely destroy the stuff we're talking about here, and even then there are hard copy print outs and stuff like that; some of it will survive. Heck, you think finding a review of CoD 2 is something impressive? Get on Google Groups sometime. There are archived usenet discussions about The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi which were carried out during each film's original theatrical run. Stuff sticks around on the internet for a long, long time.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

And people who haven't even seen the piece start commenting about how modern art is trash, typical.


Perhaps you guys don't realize this, but YOU'RE NOT THE CROWD THAT IT'S AIMED FOR.

Compare a lot of modern to games like limbo. Notice how stylized the game is, to the point where everything is completely abstract and seen only as shadows. That conveys a lot of meaning, but at the same time, principal one of modern arts is:

1. The more abstract the art becomes, the more meaning it can convey, but the more difficult it is to discern the meaning of the piece.


This is true to the point where some pieces intended to convey many layers of meaning are complete gibberish. This is the point where people can sneak bullshit in as "art". Since this is the level where telling the difference between something that has many layers of meaning that are simply difficult to discern and having no meaning whatsoever requires a significant art education, this is the level where people can give meaningless pieces to rich people who like being opulent.