How Do You Conserve Art Made of Bologna, or Bubble Gum, or Soap? | Hacker News Reader

How Do You Conserve Art Made of Bologna, or Bubble Gum, or Soap?

theatlantic.com

22 pointsprismatic26 comments

You call in a hazmat team to dispose of it.

The article leads off with the chocolate and soap busts, which at least show artistic merit, unlike nailing deli meat to the wall. However the artistic merit is unaffected by the material. IF you think these busts are notable sculpture, preserve by making a mold and casting them in a durable resin.

That preserves the sculptural form, but not the material. This pattern is shown in bronze statues (generally the original was sculpted from clay) and in plastic and resin toy figures (original often sculpted from wax).

The problem is the busts probably aren't worth preserving sculpturally (they're competent, but not evocative), and part of the perceived "art value" is being made of a weird material.

I'll use risky terminology here: If a REAL artist wanted a "chocolate bust" - since the bust is purely a visual artifact - he would sculpt or mold it of a suitable material and paint it to look like chocolate. That's what a movie or theme park would use to convey the IDEA of a chocolate bust.

The artist you have noted, Janine Antoni, did the famous piece Gnaw (a huge cube of gnawed chocolate) as well as the chocolate busts you mention. Here's a summary of her intentions:

http://www.artnews.com/2013/02/21/chocolate-self-portraits-b...

Smelling the chocolate, and indeed the possibility of a transgressive viewer licking it, is definitely part of the piece. Brown paint wouldn't cut it.

On the subject of smelly rooms, I was able to experience the chocolate room by Anya Gallacio (http://beautifuldecay.com/2014/05/27/anya-gallaccio-creates-...), and let me say, a whole gallery room that smelled of chocolate was highly memorable. I did not lick the wall, but it was allowed. Delightful!

It seems to me that if the smell of chocolate is part of the desired experience, you design and render that smell. Random link on artificial smells: https://foodbabe.com/2015/02/16/the-behind-the-scenes-market...

What kind of chocolate smell do we want? How sweet? How much vanilla note? How much burnt component? How concentrated or diffused in space? We probably don't want the smell to change over time, just like you probably don't want the colors in a painting to change over time.

To me, making the artifact out of chocolate is a bad way of creating a chocolate smell. The exposed surface area will offgas and oxidize, resulting in a diminishing and changing smell. It seems lazy; it also seems like "confusing the map with the territory".

Because the artist invited the public to lick the chocolate-covered walls of her sculpture, it's safe to assume she wanted it to change over time, and it seems evident that real chocolate was required. For words to that effect, see her quote in the link I offered above, or her statement at: http://visarts.ucsd.edu/faculty/anya-gallaccio

In general, underestimating the intentionality of top-tier artists is a losing proposition. Calling them "lazy" without even casually experiencing their work looks to me like typical nerd philistinism.

Yours is a consistent and reasoned approach to making art.

But a lot of what makes modern and contemporary art exciting (for me, anyways) is an ongoing flirtation with what's authentic or made of "real" materials, and what it means to value that, and how artworks are not fixed artifacts but ongoing systems.

If the chocolate bust challenges collectors and scientists to discover new things about preserving chocolate, then that discovery becomes part of the work's story.

There is a reason installations list the materials they're made of in the title card.

Take a work like Love Remembered [1] this could have been easily created using actual pills but making the piece with actual pills is a completely different work of art than painstakingly sculpturing a representation of real pills. The same way Crematorium [2] could have been recreated using sculptured cigarette butts and a synthetic smoke smell but it wouldn't be the same experience as walking up to the piece and about a meter or so away the stale stench of smoke hits you (the piece genuinely reeks) and knowing that it's real stale cigarettes.

[1] http://www.damienhirst.com/images/hirstimage/DHS6220DtlL1_77...

[2] http://www.damienhirst.com/images/hirstimage/DHS469rt1_771_0...

I'd assume you could paint it with chocolate as well though

Why is the bust a "purely visual artifact"? Why do you put the visual constraint on it?

> The problem is the busts probably aren't worth preserving sculpturally (they're competent, but not evocative), and part of the perceived "art value" is being made of a weird material.

> I'll use risky terminology here: If a REAL artist wanted a "chocolate bust" - since the bust is purely a visual artifact - he would sculpt or mold it of a suitable material and paint it to look like chocolate. That's what a movie or theme park would use to convey the IDEA of a chocolate bust.

this is where many (myself included) will disagree with you. i don't think it's reasonable to discount the artistic value of making something of weird material. like any broad category of choice, that sort of thing won't inherently increase or decrease the worth of the piece. but as other posters have noted, that choice can be an inherently important part of the work's meaning, and it's not always possible to achieve the same thing through more durable means.

i think of art as a constant ongoing global conversation. it requires context. it can't be appreciated in a vacuum. sometimes part of the communication is "out of band" for the ostensible medium (think about the way body language or vocal delivery can undercut or augment the meaning of a set of spoken words). i don't believe there's such a thing as an inherently universally meaningful piece of art, or a truly timeless piece of art, and i don't really buy this idea that a "real" artist will do the best work within the proscriptions of the sorts of art that have come before. subversion (and even cheekiness) can be important artistic ideals as worthwhile as any other.

as implied above, i think all meaning in art is inherently deeply subjective. i think it's fun to talk about it like it's objective, and to talk shit about the "other side"'s viewpoint (whoever the other side may be in a given argument). but the other replies to your comment illustrate why i don't actually believe in the ideas of "real" art, or "high" art, or whatever.

i do believe that some art is inherently ephemeral, and some aspects of some more durable art are inherently ephemeral (e.g. performances of notated or recorded works). i don't believe that it's inherently crazy or unartistic to make something out of bologna that's unpreservable, because preservability isn't an inherent component of all good art.

> If a REAL artist ... That's what a movie or theme park would [do]

... because theme parks are noted for the quality of their art.

You're talking dismissively about art as if it's something about which anyone's casual opinion is equally valid.

Conceptual art is an intellectual tradition, like most human activities, and you 're only revealing your own prejudices and ignorance when you dismiss it.

I'm not saying "leave it to the professionals to discuss art", but please at least have the politeness to be aware that there's a bit more to this than reactionary ideas about mimetic "artistic merit" or talent.

The medium an artist chooses may be a strong indicator of their intention for the piece's longevity.

I was thinking the same thing. For something like Fox Games, the use of bread rather than a permanent material is incidental. But for a bust made of chocolate or an art piece where meat is nailed to a wall, the impermanent material is clearly part of the piece.

I remember when a 'golden age' (modern/pop art) display from MoMA came to my town. A lot of important pieces where there, but everything was tired and fading with age. Most notably was an art piece that was mounted on the wall, a metal thing with dangly bits, that the museum had put 'don't touch' around. But in the informational blurb, the artist intended the piece to be touched and physically spun by the viewer. I always wondered if the artist would have preferred the piece to be worn out and destroyed through interaction with the public, or frozen in time and put on static display forever (which seems opposite to the original intent).

This really reminds me of the debate over who does art belong to once it's released out into the world?

On the one hand, it makes complete sense that the creator of the artwork should have the final say in how it is interacted with by viewers, and whether or not it should be preserved.

But on the other hand, when George Lucas says I'm not allowed to purchase the original non-digitally-enhanced version of the first Star Wars movie so dear to my childhood memories it really pisses me off!

I happened to talk to one of the MOCA curators who put together Dan Flavin's recent retrospective at MOCA in LA. The work, as described in TFA, is (famously) made of fluorescent tubes in very simple arrangements (e.g., https://www.moca.org/collection/work/monument-for-v-tatlin). Because of the simplicity, small color changes are noticeable, and really affect your perception of the piece. The conservation crew had to drive out to a warehouse in Arizona which still had leftovers of the same tubes used in the original piece. In a hypothetical future retrospective, she had no idea where the tubes were going to come from. They bought a bunch. ;-)

Another example is Nam June Paik's early installations with massed televisions. They are CRT televisions - he liked that form and it is integral to the way his pieces look -- and they tend to break down over time. Here's a nice piece on conserving an intricate piece of his: https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2013/04/15/conservin...

Seems to me that if an artist chooses to use a fragile or organic medium for their art they have to accept the fact that it's going to be a temporary object.

After all cooks make artistic dishes that they know will exist only for a short time. Sidewalk chalk artists make some of the most amazing drawings I've ever seen and they're perfectly happy knowing they are only temporary.

I think making a cast or other physical reproduction actual reduces the artistic quality of the item. Some things are ephemeral and they should be looked at that way.

Well...

http://theconversation.com/preservationists-race-to-capture-...

Or Peanutbutter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pindakaasvloer

A short term version of this problem exists in food and flower photography. The power output of the light and oxidization can turn a pretty dish or flower into much or a wilted mess before the right shot is made.

There exists a whole industry to fake the products.

take a picture and let go

Bologna is a city. Mortadella is the food.

Source: born and raised in Bologna.

Then you'd think you'd know that Bologna is a US variant of Mortadella that omits the cubes of pork fat.

It's named after your home city, and inspired by Mortadella, but it's not the same thing.

And, more relevantly to this topic, frequently full of preservatives.

And it is sometimes called baloney:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/baloney

or even polony:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/polony

and pronounced VERY differently from "Bologna" (the city).

To me calling the product just "Bologna" (as opposed to "Bologna sausage") sounds inappropriate (in the context of an article on theatlantic.com and particularly one with an intended "cultural" value), but as often happens it's probably just me.

I know but I still think it's wrong; a city is a city and food is food, so at least people should have the decency of using the adjective form (like Frankfurter) or a made-up name like baloney, not the capitalized city name. So I'm taking it back (https://youtu.be/dWdVwt2deY4 ).

Good luck with that.

shellac

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