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| Great White North |
| Canadians demand more welfare art |
| 2008-09-19 |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #6 Very interesting comments, Anonymoose. There is an artist I like very much named James Turrell, who specializes in art utilizing light in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes spectacular. There was a small exhibition of some of his work at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art several years back, and it made as much of an impression on me as any exhibition I've ever seen. I actually visited a few times. One piece I found particularly fascinating, called GasWorks, was shaped like a gas tank. You lie in a bed and enter the interior of the spherical container (sort of like an MRI). The interior of the sphere is uniformly white and, naturally, there are no corners or shadows. When they turn it on, you see your whole body enveloped in light. It was amazing! Honestly, I felt so much like I was dreaming that I was almost tingling. It was very strange. I felt like I was floating in a sea of pure colors with no perception of any limits to the space around me at all. On my 40th birthday, I happened to not be working, so I drove myself down to get there when they had just opened. Since it was a weekday, I was the only person there for quite some time, so the attendant who ran the machine was happy to let me experience it over and over again. Definitely one of the best birthdays I've ever had. |
| Posted by: ryuge 2008-09-19 15:55 |
| #5 Trying to upstage the US; The SOund Transit debacle here in the Seattle area has a mandate to install art in all its facilites and one artist was going to use (and I am not making this up) old F-18 airframes and suspend pieces of them from the ceiling. the Capitol Hill neighborhood where the staing will be went absolutely ballistic. the howls from the peaceniks could be heard all over. how dare they hsng intruments of war in our neighborhood. ST folded, took its gonads and went home. |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2008-09-19 14:21 |
| #4 There are several interesting possibilities in art in the future, to extricate it from its half century slump. My favorite is phenomenological art. That is, if you go to a museum of science and industry, they have any number of scientific phenomena on display. They do this to explain it, but why not integrate it into art? In a manner of speaking, to put the "magic" back into art. If done properly, most viewers should be left with the question how is that done? Importantly, the artist doesn't answer the question, but uses it to enhance the rest of the art. Another idea is to create dynamic art which reaches beyond itself. Simple versions of this are art that is interactive with the viewer, their presence and actions changing images and sounds. Art for the Wii generation. A different style that impressed me had obvious origins. The artist had created an erect skeleton of sorts, made from ordinary re-bar. Inside it was a light bulb traveling on a track. The art was the shadow on the walls of the darkened room which contained the skeleton. The end result of art today should be to move aesthetics back in to the utilitarian home. Most homes are terribly utilitarian, with little art other than generic and bland pictures on blank walls. The last great adventure in architecture was Space Age design, which was ahead of its time, but with the better materials we have today, should still be around. It was both utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing, but without being oppressive. Perhaps improving its ergonomics and efficiency somewhat, today we might finally create the home of the future, which we always dreamed of. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-09-19 12:16 |
| #3 It's not a real protest until they spell something with their nekkid bodies. |
| Posted by: ed 2008-09-19 11:15 |
| #2 I'll settle for Corner Gas. |
| Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats 2008-09-19 10:46 |
| #1 Artsy fartsy folks probably think this is an effective protest. Most everybody else will consider it, like, beyond goofy. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-09-19 09:24 |
