UPDATE (Backdate?): One of the commenters was reminded of something that had crossed my mind too: that time a janitor threw out a trash bag that was actually part of an art exhibit:
A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner.
The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the "finite existence" of art....
The bag was part of Metzger's Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art, a copy of a piece he produced in 1960...
Metzger, a German artist who lives in east London, invented "auto-destructive" art in 1959.
The work also features an "acid painting" - nylon covered in acid which slowly destroys it to illustrate the transient nature of paintings, sculptures and other artworks....
It is not the first time such a mistake has been made. In 2001 a cleaner at a London's Eyestorm Gallery gallery cleared away an installation by artist Damien Hirst, having mistaken it for a pile of rubbish.
The collection of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays was said to represent the chaos of an artist's studio.
And in the 1980s the work of Joseph Beuys, which featured a very dirty bath, was scrubbed clean by a gallery worker in Germany.
I can't help suspecting that these are, if not deliberate publicity stunts, hoped for or welcomed opportunities for press coverage.
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9 comments:
I wonder if it was particularly refreshing.
I also wonder if anyone would notice the difference were he to get another plastic bottle for the display and fill it with tap water.
The whole way that the value on the bottle of water was set is extremely suspect. The artist apparently figured some huge cost for global warming and then divided by how much ice was going to melt. Or something like that. Artists aren't always the most logical types out there.
The Martian ice-caps show signs of melting too. Did we do that with our nasty hegemonic imperialist rockets, destroy the ecology of outer space? Martian water would probably be worth it at that price, NASA would have a bargain. Artist are seldom very scientific. Sometimes they're a canary in a coal-mine, sometimes just a bird that poops.
And I suppose you would suggest that all left-wing people and no right-wing people would defend the artist's beliefs here because we're all morons! Similarly, all artsy people are left wing, and all artsy people are pretentious idiots! Thanks Brendan!
Oh, and you never answered me in that other thread: Where in that BBC article about the man who killed his Korean wife did it ever mention that she was mail-order? Why is it assumed that anyone who married a Korean woman must have ordered her through the mail rather than assume that maybe she just happened to live in Britain without citizenship? Oh? I see. Good answer.
This just sets up his next exhibit:
Antarctic Backwash.
Too funny! If that bottle of water was really art, the six pack of Leinie in my fridge must be a Rembrandt!
I think John just won this conversation.
OK.(sigh) For 42,500 I'll go to Antarctica and get another bottle of melted ice for the "artist"
Anyone know how I can get a hold of this guy?
Anyone else reminded of the Adam Sandler movie "The Water Boy"... where he's unconsious and his girlfriend brings him that special botter of water that wakes him up...
I can just picture the water thief drinking it and saying to himself, "That's some mighty fine H20."
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