art – Page 3

Get Real, V&A

Posted on August 29, 2012August 30, 2012

Oh dear. Someone is unhappy. And it’s about this:

Do you, like me, see a smiling sculpture made up of several thousand plastic crates, constantly updated to represent the Cape Town Zeitgeist? Or, maybe like Chris Andrews of University Estate (via today’s Cape Times’ letters page), you see a

…crass assemblage of Coca-Cola crates at the V&A Waterfront… a monument to mediocrity, global exploitation and humankind’s dysfunctional health and disregard for our treasured eco-heritage.

Wow. Steady on, Chris Andrews. I recognise that this could be classed as “art”, and therefore there are no right and wrong answers here. And I also completely respect your right to express your opinion.

But seriously? I’m really not sure how you managed to get from a friendly looking heap of red plastic to blaming the V&A Waterfront for all of mankind’s worst traits. A stretch of note.

I sense that you don’t like the crate man. Does his Olympic gold medal really scream “mediocrity” to you? Does the way he sits so jauntily between the fishing port and the dry dock make you honestly make you wonder about how we’re collectively not looking after our bodies? Or is it perhaps his smile that invokes a sharp sense of injustice regarding our alleged lack of respect for the planet?

Look, I know where you’re coming from. Art is emotive. It is meant to challenge. Why, the first time I saw Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in 1988, I was immediately hit with intense and disconcerting feelings over society’s treatment of the poor, the exploitation of dogs working at Singapore Airport, the appalling lack of praise afforded to Kylie Minogue and extreme disappointment at the average life span of a standard 60W incandescent light bulb.

And yet, when I voiced these feelings, I was shouted down. People said I was reading too much into 0.4081 square metres of oil on canvas. Looking back, I don’t really blame them. They were right.
I guess some people are saying the same to you about your views on the crate man. And I don’t really blame them either.

Your letter continues:

So not cool. Away with this eyesore, V&A – in the Design Capital of the World, what were you thinking?

I hate people that begin sentences like that with “So”. So unnecessary.

For your information, Chris Andrews, Crateman was revealed just ahead of the World Cup in 2010. South Korean capital Seoul was the World Design Capital in 2010. Additionally, a quick check of any sort of reasonable fact book or interweb site (I suggest www.google.com or www.worlddesigncapital.com) would indicate that the Finnish city of Helsinki is the current (2012) World Design Capital.

From your statement, am I to therefore understand that the V&A have installed an equally hideous (in your view) monstrosity somewhere in Finland? What on earth would prompt them to do that? Is that where my car parking cash is going?

Suddenly I can understand your anger.

But no, Chris Andrews. Cape Town will become World Design Capital in 2014, when sculptures made of Coke crates and the like will surely be de rigour.

I know. So not cool.

UPDATE: See anib’s comment below and look at her Helsinki pics.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands…

Posted on June 4, 2012June 4, 2012

Lines you never thought you’d be writing on your blog:

Orville the cat’s nine lives ran out after being hit by a car last year; but rather than simply paying his respects and burying him peacefully, Orville’s owner Bart Jansen has turned him into a work of art.
Orville’s body has been stuffed, poked, prodded and turned into a remote control helicopter.

In fact, let’s just run that by you (and me) one more time:

Orville’s body has been stuffed, poked, prodded and turned into a remote control helicopter.

Here’s the story. If only there was a picture. Wait, there is!

Amazing. If only there was a video.

No – seriously?

Admit it. You’re looking at Felix and you’re thinking about jet engines, aren’t you?

Brian on Art

Posted on April 7, 2011April 7, 2011

Regular readers will know of my fondness for Brian Micklethwait’s blog and his narrative, no nonsense style of writing.

Today, Brian gave us a collage of Anthony Gormley’s exhibit(s?) in London during the summer of 2007. But it wasn’t the pictures that piqued my interest so much as Brian’s commentary:

For some damn fool artistic type reason that need not concern us unless we want it to, Gormley called these Men “Event Horizon”. (Artists who make nice things but talk bollocks about them are a characteristic type of our time, I think. I don’t blame them. If they didn’t talk bollocks they’d never get their careers cranked up. Anyway, it makes a change from a generation ago, when the things they made were almost entirely bollocks also.) The Gormley Men are all based on Gormley himself.
Critic Howard Halle (see here) out-Gormleyed Gormley by saying this:
“Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails.”
Whatever. In other words, you see in these metal Men whatever you want to see, much as you see whatever you want to see when confronting actual men.

I can’t agree with Brian that what artists produce these days is any better than what artists produced a generation ago. Lest we forget that during this year’s (at least partially) publicly-funded “Infecting The City” arts “festival” in Cape Town:

City “treasures”, including King Edward’s statue on the Grand Parade, were covered in clingwrap and trees on the station forecourt were draped in toilet paper.

Which, to me, almost entirely indicates that things in the art world really haven’t moved on at all in the last 30 years.

Post 903

Posted on February 24, 2009October 14, 2013

Post 903
(title assigned automatically by an annoyingly slow WordPress (see below) and which I have neither the will nor the imagination to change to anything more interesting)

Stuff I have noted over the last few days:

1. The internet in South Africa has been even worse than usual of late. I blamed my ISP, my ISP blamed Telkom and Telkom blamed Ndujani.
It turns out (following extensive research) that Ndujani is a mongoose god, worshipped by some tribes in the Northern Cape. Any claim that Telkom is merely passing the buck is met with the standard, “Please don’t turn this into a cultural issue, Mr 6000”.
More likely is that one (or more) of their ADSL hamsters which keep the internet working by running around their little wheels in Bloemfontein has died or gone on strike or something. Probably over a cultural issue.

2. The Oscars were on. A celebration of Hollywood excess while everyone else suffers the wrath of the global credit crunch.
More salt with your wound, sir?
I’m not a big fan of the movies, but was pleased to see that Kate Winslet finally won something after so many bare-breasted cinematographic moments. Had to be worth it in the end, hey? (But please don’t stop now – you could win again!)
One thing I found shocking was that, even though winning a little gold man surely marks the pinnacle of any actor’s career, Keith Ledger couldn’t even be bothered to turn up and receive his award for Best Supporting Actor. What a snub. They should have given it to someone else. It’s just plain bad manners.

3. I’m concerned over a tectonic shift in my musical tastes of late. Away from decent Indie and Nu-metal towards irritatingly-catchy Brit-pop, hip-hop, rap and pumpin’ House.
As I write this, I have David Guetta’s Joan of Arc on the iPod. Actually, to give everyone credit, it’s actually David Guetta (featuring Thailand). It remains unclear whether everyone in Thailand (pop. 60.5 million) played their part, but if so, then they probably shouldn’t have bothered.
[Mental note to self: Check up on most ridiculous names of “featured artists” for future blog post]

4. Twitter isn’t actually that good. Either you follow too few people and nothing ever happens, you follow too many and everything happens too quickly or one person (no names, sorry) fills your screen with rubbish for the sake of putting something (usually about cooking) on twitter.
I’m left debating whether the very occasional good bits are worth the very regular daily disappointments. Le jury est out, as the French would say.

5. I saw a “collaborative project” in the Art Spot of the newspaper yesterday:

Trasi Henen curates a collaborative project [see?] called I Forget That You Exist’ at the Cape Town gallery, Blank Projects. Participants were asked to engage with the following Dialectic: Dominant culture is a victim of the Will (after Schopenhauer’s The World as Idea and Representation) and therefore perpetually oscillating between Desire and Ennui. Desire is a state of potentiality.
When the desired destination is reached, is this a tragedy?

Sometimes I forget that you exist is a collaborative research project around desire and the heterotopia. Participants are asked to engage with the above dialectic. The exhibition process is ongoing, and contingent, culminating in a closing event. In the two weeks leading up the exhibition, blank becomes the research studio which opens the project to dialogue and interventions.

Something for everyone to think about there, then.

I was once asked (in a 1992 interview for a place at Wolverhampton Poly, no less) if money spent on the Arts is a waste. I wish I’d seen stuff like this before they asked – it would have made a rather stuttered, awkward answer much simpler. (Because there’s obviously nothing more beneficial that Trasi could be doing for the world).