Italian Artist Auctions Off an ‘Invisible Sculpture’ for $18,300
news.artnet.com
news.artnet.com
I've said this many times -- I contend that the actual product, the creative output as it were, of much modern art isn't the thing itself, but what is said about it.
Nothing ugly (or invisible!) is self-evident, even to the most highly trained senses. They all require many words of explanation in their own little ways.
No one would go to a restaurant where each dish requires a paragraph of text to "appreciate" the taste and texture, and is unpalatable otherwise...
In other words, what was said enhanced the experience without being essential.
We wouldn't eat food or drink wine that requires many words of explanation to even be palatable - that was my point.
Portlandia: Colin the Chicken
If you buy into the idea that art is about creating reactions, then the reaction that you're going for is very important. In fact, maybe it's the main way you judge whether the artwork or is good or not. From that perspective, you can consider a Confederate statue art but unworthy art.
I appreciate well-explained masterpieces -- both in art and in food -- where the explanation enhances the experience without being essential to even being able to enjoy it at all.
Edit: brb, I've got an invisible bridge to mint.
The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity
/s
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/this-scannable-nyc-bill...
I mean the estate of John Cage sues people for including silence in audio tracks, so why not.
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/
Significant silence in music isn't Cage's invention, and if that silent minute was embedded in a track, there's enough prior art that Cage's estate wouldn't have a claim.
https://stringsmagazine.com/silence-the-way-in-which-great-c...
It quite alters the respect to other genuine works of artists, but it is an art of itself. An artifact of our legalized societies, perhaps a comedy staring at us as much as we stare at its sale price.
There's some precedent here - the 'set-of-instructions-as-art-object' goes back at least the 70s (maybe earlier, not sure when Sol Lewitt first started doing them for his wall drawings [1], or if he was even the first), often used by conceptual artists as a tool to monetize/distribute (and institutions/patrons to support) an otherwise unmonetizable or undistributable practice. Kind of a retro move now in the age of NFTs and Patreon, but there's a history to it, even if this is probably one of the least interesting examples it I've seen
[1] https://imageobjecttext.com/2014/02/05/just-following-instru...
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
I enjoy the thought process that goes into these things. I love the fact there was a person who thought people would enjoy the sight of a concrete ball in a glass bathtub or something, and they went and created it.
The enjoyment I get from, let's say, plain drawings of objects or vistas is very straightforward, it's already done. The enjoyment I get from conceptual art is somehow "procedural". It's a seed for my thoughts, it's a little blip of curiosity in world full of mundane objects.
That last part is key for me - that they actually made it. I personally would never bother with such "silly" ideas, but I nevertheless understand how much effort is involved in sourcing, manipulating, transporting, etc. physical things, and I have a certain amount of inspiration and respect for people who follow through with their ideas, however trite or uninspiring I might find them subjectively.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ig4aJey9QZM
[1] https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/Wonder-Womans-Invisi...
You laugh, but this is absolutely what art is, especially modern art. The best way I've heard to understand art, and this kind of art in particular, is that art is a dialogue - it's a concept and it's a reflection on its environment and its circumstances more than it's a piece of technical execution. This is particularly true of movements like Abstract Expressionism, which tend to garner a lot of the "my kid could have done that"-type comments - they're focused on things like exploring new techniques, on trying to make works with different materials, on trying to express concepts without using form or figure. Works often exist "in conversation" with other works - for instance, an artist may make a painting explicitly referencing another artist's work or as a refutation of a different school of thought, and these works may not be particularly interesting taken as an individual work, but if you understand their context, they can be a fascinating intellectual accomplishment.
All of that's a long way to say that if you just look at art as a decorative or technical exercise, you're absolutely not going to understand the art world or often why a piece is considered interesting or valuable - you need to also look at the context of the piece and what the artist was attempting to accomplish to get the full picture.
The only art in any of this is the art of bilking money from morons who want to impress other morons.
This is literally applicable to any subject which the listener doesn't find valuable or interesting. To someone outside our field, kubernetes is neither valuable nor interesting in and of itself either. Nothing is valuable or interesting for its own sole sake.
But yes, I'm also just conveying a subjective opinion. I think this is worthless bullshit designed solely to steal money from suckers. Feel free to subjectively disagree.
The point was that just because the performer/performers is/are not playing their instruments does not mean you have silence in the concert hall. You still have the sounds of the audience, sounds from things like the HVAC system, sounds from outside, and probably others.
We are never truly in silence (even in an anechoic chamber your hear your body), but we learn to ignore these ambient sounds most of the time to the point that we usually aren't aware of them even if the things we want to listen to are briefly silent.
Cage wanted the audience to realize and experience that there was no true silence, and that there was a whole world of sounds that they had been ignoring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York.
I refuse to believe this has any source other than money laundering though.
> The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a receipt, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the receipt, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Pictu...
But more seriously, most contract law requires consideration from both parties. I wonder what would happen if the buyer demanded his money back, and just sort of said he still has it?
Not sure if more serious is still half joke :) However, according to the article, a certificate was provided with the sale, so in case of return, the buyer couldn't prove anymore they own it.
This is a more pure form, when the useless object is not even added.