April 9, 2018
I figured after some weeks of heavy-duty politics I’ll turn to some events in the art world that caught my attention. Do I hear a collective sigh of relief?
You might have read about a recent incident at Honk Kong’s Harbour Art Fair. Cleaners mistook a sculpture by Carol May for thrash and threw it out; when they realized their error, it was too late, the sculpture was already compacted and destroyed. I don’t blame them – the object was a screen-printed cardboard box with the McDonalds Logo on it – looking like the real thing, with the twist of an unhappy mouth instead of a happy one.
I can’t help but grinning at the irony – this is not the first time that art focussed on the throw-away mentality and excesses of our society experiences that very fate.
In 2015 an art installation by Goldie Chiari of empty booze bottles and party favors, titled Where shall we go dancing tonight, was removed by the cleaners. Luckily the champagne bottles and party poppers survived their trip in the trash bags and dustbins, and were re-installed after discovery of the mishap. https://nypost.com/2015/10/27/modern-art-exhibit-mistaken-for-trash-and-thrown-away/
The director of the Museion Bozen Bolzano even touted this mishap as a great opportunity to discuss what is art. A question I am unable to answer, in this and so many other cases…. and I am seemingly not the only one.
In 2008 someone fell into a 9ft tall ceramic sculpture by Tatiana Fernandez at London’s Royal Academy and broke it. Subsequent museum visitors and staff thought that the hundreds of shards and larger broken pieces lying around were part of the exhibition. We have clearly added refuse to our schema of what constitutes modern art.
Except for the cleaning crews. Untouched by the intricacies of the evolution of art, they blithely go about their business.
It has happened to Damien Hirst – in 2001 a janitor at London’s Eyestorm Gallery cleared away his pile of beer bottles, ashtrays and coffee cups (meant to represent the life of an artist).
It has happened to Gustav Metzger – in 2004, the German artist’s installation Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art was on display at the Tate Britain. A museum employee accidentally threw part of it away, a trash bag standing in close proximity to the sculpture. The bag was later recovered, but it was too damaged to display. What is an artist to do? Well, Metzger replaced it with another bag full of trash. Go figure.
My favorite of all times, though, are mishasps based on good old German Hausfrau values. “In 1986 a 400,000-euro grease stain by Josef Beuys was simply mopped up in Duesseldorf. In 1973 two women cleaned up a baby bathtub Beuys had wrapped in gauze and bandages so they could use the container to wash dishes after an event.” And in 2001 a cleaning lady scrubbed away the “dirt,” a thin layer of paint, in an installation of a bathtub in Dortmund by the late Martin Kippenberger .
http://www.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys-contemporary-sculpture-with-her-scrubbing/a-15510231
Photographs are of “art pieces” in another universe, perhaps.
joseph mclelland
Thank you. I have the feeling that Beuys must see some of those “results” as success, given what I know of his motives and story . . .I’ve stopped at construction sites where a pileup of tools and material do a sort of Uccello-Juan Gris-Beuys chorus. (I’ve learned to keep quiet and just look). You’re such a help with your reports. Salut!
Lee Musgrave
This subject, trash and general ephemera, have engaged my artistic endeavors for decades. During that journey the one aspect of it which I’ve noted has changed significantly is how it is presented. When it is framed or set on a pedestal most viewers perceive it as art. However, if it is just on the floor or next to a trash can their sense of propriety tells them to ignore it . . . that there isn’t anything of artistic value there. We carry this attitude with us throughout our lives. For example, if you dress a genius in an expense suit he is regarded as being of value to society, if you dress him in tattered, dirty cloths he is seen as a burden on society (something to be disposed of). Perhaps, the bigger puzzle is why are some people willing to pay hundreds of thousands for a grease stain on the gallery floor while others don’t even want to invest their time looking at it . . . so I’m convinced that there is a great deal to say for presentation or as my mum used to say in the morning when I was dressing “don’t forget you may meet the Queen today”.
Carl Wolfsohn
Love the McArt story!
Ron Cronin
Hi Fridericke,
Your latest post about “art” being thrown in the trash reminds me of an similar event when I was in college. Phyllis Yes, a local artist, took common objects and dribbled paint on them in tiny lines. One was a Porsche, which she painted like lace. The other I remember was a ladder, which was covered in paint. It was on display at Portland State, and a janitor borrowed it to use, probably cursing the careless painter who got so much paint on it. So of course, his boots ruined the paint job.