Conceptual art: what's the point?

[IdleRich]

@IdleRich owns a polystyrene foam coffee cup that was signed by, oh I dunno, Gavin Turk or Damien Hirst or someone like that. Have you had it valued lately, Rich?

No but I'd like to. He did ten of them to raise money for Resonance FM and I bought one of them.

Seeing as these tea stains are (apparently) worth £380

Gavin Turk | Image | Artworks

shop.gavinturk.com

And the cup is surely at least as complicated as that but a hundred times rarer it must be worth at least - ooh - £38,000

 

[Corpsey]

it could be argued, though, that a work by Koons and Hirst IS in fact a product of a single imagination (theirs) which is executed by workers (the "committee").

Yep, probably, as is - to a large degree - a painting dictated by Rubens but mostly painted by somebody else. As is a Stanley Kubrick movie (we'd like to think), despite all those hundreds working on it.

The point I was getting at was that for whatever reason we would prefer to think that someone, individually, is responsible for an individual work of art.

And like I said, Hirst and Koons have to be judged on what their imagination has produced, not their hands. Koons's mind seems to be fully of crafty banalities.

 

[IdleRich]

I have no problem with Koons, Hirst or Murukami having workers executing their ideas. As people say above it was ever thus.
Rodin used to make small models and get his students to make them to the correct size.
Rousseau couldn't draw properly and used some sort of tool to help him with proportion.
Wasn't there a renaissance artist who used to get the outline on paper using a camera obscura and then trace round the outlines?
etc etc
I do hate Koons but not for that reason.

 

[Corpsey]

I'd like to see Hurst's formaldehyde animals fwiw

 

[catalog]

I saw the sheep one a few years ago at a retrospective sensation show, it was rubbish, loads of bits floating round in the formaldehyde and the whole thingfeeling a bit tired and going off. And then I saw his gold horned sheep recently at Leeds art gallery and thought it was really good. All the new hirsts at Yorkshire sculpture park are also really good

 

[IdleRich]

I'd like to see Hurst's formaldehyde animals fwiw

He fucked up the chemicals on at least some of them and they started to decay. That doesn't reflect well on him - I don't demand virtuosity in art but I think achieving your aims (whatever they are) is part of it. Despite Hirst saying "Oh I actually quite like that" doesn't get him off the hook for shoddy work.

 

[Corpsey]

The Sun:
"£50,000 for fish without chips."

The NYT:
"In keeping with the piece's title, the shark is simultaneously life and death incarnate in a way you don't quite grasp until you see it, suspended and silent, in its tank. It gives the innately demonic urge to live a demonic, deathlike form."

Either response is tempting.

Aided and abetted by sinister music, I did find the sequence in Planet Earth in which sharks sprang from the water in super slow mo to annihilate sealions something like the Romantic sublime, staring into the void of death. I think it's the black eyes like a doll's eyes (married to the horrible teeth) that make those sharks so symbolic of death.

 

[Corpsey]

They look with those (Mulder and) skulleyes like death bringing death. A lion jumping on a zebra looks like life bringing death.

 

[IdleRich]

No but I'd like to. He did ten of them to raise money for Resonance FM and I bought one of them.

Seeing as these tea stains are (apparently) worth £380

Gavin Turk | Image | Artworks

shop.gavinturk.com

And the cup is surely at least as complicated as that but a hundred times rarer it must be worth at least - ooh - £38,000

This is where I got it

 

[pattycakes_]

On the one hand, good for her, but on the other, sucks that it's worth that because of this cunt's signature rather than because of an appreciation for her work.

I'd have to say hate the game and not the player here because if I could make 100k for my signature you can bet your bottom dollar I would. But yeah.

 

[Corpsey]

I was at an art show in London earlier this year which was also an art sale. The art was decent, mostly unmemorable. At one point I overheard a family of four discussing which painting they would each get. They seemed "jolly nice" people but I couldn't help but feel disgusted realising (as if it wasn't staring my in the face) the sort of people who alone could afford to spend several grand on a painting, quite casually.

And that set me thinking about how art is inherently corrupted from the top down, because you have to produce nothing that really disturbs the values of the rich to make a living, let alone be successful.

This should have caused me to convert to Marxism, I suppose?

"[Stephen A. Cohen] owns one of the world's most valuable private art collections, worth over $1 billion, which includes notable artworks such as Koons's Rabbit, Picasso's Le Rêve, and Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."

"In 2013, the Cohen-founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading and agreed to pay $1.8bn in fines (900M in forfeiture and 900M in fines) in one of the biggest criminal cases against a hedge fund. Cohen was prohibited from managing outside money for 2 years as part of the settlement reached in the civil case over his accountability for the scandal. The hedge fund agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and four counts of securities fraud and to close to outside investors.[1]"

 

[version]

The Sun:
"£50,000 for fish without chips."

The NYT:
"In keeping with the piece's title, the shark is simultaneously life and death incarnate in a way you don't quite grasp until you see it, suspended and silent, in its tank. It gives the innately demonic urge to live a demonic, deathlike form."

Either response is tempting.

Aided and abetted by sinister music, I did find the sequence in Planet Earth in which sharks sprang from the water in super slow mo to annihilate sealions something like the Romantic sublime, staring into the void of death. I think it's the black eyes like a doll's eyes (married to the horrible teeth) that make those sharks so symbolic of death.

This scene from Blue Planet II's always creeped me out. The eye on the one at 1:43...

 

[Corpsey]

Christ it's horrible isn't it? It's like insect eyes, totally emotionless, like coming face to face with the horror the horror

 

[IdleRich]

And that set me thinking about how art is inherently corrupted from the top down, because you have to produce nothing that really disturbs the values of the rich to make a living, let alone be successful.

It's well documented that paintings that are the right size to fit on a mansion wall punch above their weight at auction - though perhaps this is not explicitly stated by delicate art world types. And in the same way if a conservative billionaire (as opposed to a true art lover whatever that is) wants a decoration they are gonna want something that is decorative - the right size, certain colours, not something too violent or unpleasant to look at etc

 

[version]

"Property is no longer about power, personality and command. It's not about vulgar display or tasteful display. Because it no longer has weight or shape. The only thing that matters is the price you pay. Yourself, Eric, think. What did you buy for your one hundred and four million dollars? Not dozens of rooms, incomparable views, private elevators. Not the rotating bedroom and computerized bed. Not the swimming pool or the shark. Was it air rights? The regulating sensors and software? Not the mirrors that tell you how you feel when you look at yourself in the morning. You paid the money for the number itself. One hundred and four million. This is what you bought. And it's worth it. The number justifies itself.”

 

[IdleRich]

Cosmopolis.

 

[version]

Yeah.

 

[IdleRich]

That quote struck me when I read it. Something that - unlike a lot of what he comes out with - is inarguably true or right.

 

[version]

That quote struck me when I read it. Something that - unlike a lot of what he comes out with - is inarguably true or right.

I think that book's underappreciated. I like the film too. He may be simplifying what a bunch of theorists have already said, but that has value in itself and he preempted the financial crisis and Occupy by about five years. I still have no clue what's going on at the end though. The conversation between Packer and Levin's so dense.

 

[IdleRich]

In fact I don't just mean Delillo particularly. It's just so many authors make so many authoritative sounding pronouncements but few land with such forcefulness and feel so immediately correct.