Floor piece
Posted on | August 6, 2010 | No Comments
Carl Andre floor piece or carpet squares?
Rounding a corner at the Denver Art Museum, I came across this Carl Andre floor piece, except that it’s actually just carpet in a seating area off one of the galleries.
Studio Foam
Posted on | July 16, 2010 | No Comments
Pyramid studio foam or a minimalist creation?
In preparation for a video exhibition, our preparator framed some bits of studio foam for the walls to help dampen the competing sounds from several films, which would be playing near one another in the galleries. But once the panels were hung on the wall, they looked too much like art. Visitors spent nearly as much time contemplating the beautifully framed foam as the video art.
(And one panel still hangs in the preparator’s office, so perhaps they were right to think it was art.)
Glitter Poo
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments
Sequined poo or art?
This little doozy was spotted on the sidewalk between MassArt and the SMFA. It appeared to be Sculpey, rather than something that came out of the south end of a northbound dog. But if it was indeed bedazzled poo, it wouldn’t be that far out of the art world realm. Chris Ofili ruffled Rudy Giuliani’s feathers a decade ago with his glittery elephant dung paintings and Piero Manzoni sold tins of his own merda d’artista to numerous museums and collectors in the early 1960s.
Sculpture Park
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments
Fire hydrant or sculpture?
A friend visited the new public art display at the proposed site of the Constellation Center, which is a giant gravel lot surrounded by a chain-link fence with some sculptures trapped inside–like a prison camp for art. He thinks the artwork was only inside the fence, but the way the fence frames the fire hydrant so specifically, it’s almost as if the hydrant is art too. And what about the rusty-looking pipes sticking out of the ground inside the fence? They’re in the art zone, but are they art?
Traffic cone on a pole or sculpture?
Confusing the issue even more, this enigmatic traffic cone on a pole is definitely within the fenced art area, but is it art? (It’s certainly not the first time we’ve seen traffic cones as art, e.g. in Juan Angel Chávez‘s enormous sound sculpture, Speaker Project.)
Courtesy of The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.
Dryer Lint
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments
Lint or found material?
A friend was visiting MoMA when she noticed some lint next to Gabriel Orozco’s Empty Shoe Box. She asked the guard if the lint was part of the piece and the guard replied snarkily, “What do you think?”
She still isn’t sure.
(And given his use of found materials and his blurring of art/reality boundaries, we still aren’t sure either…)
Paper Towels
Posted on | June 30, 2010 | No Comments
Paper towels or an inspired pile?
My mom, a high school art teacher, encountered a student’s impromptu sculptural work in the bathroom near the art room and immediately thought of Ron Arad’s London Pappardelle series (one of which is on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in nearby Kansas City).
Concrete Bag
Posted on | June 30, 2010 | No Comments
Concrete or art?
One day our neighbor decided to put a lovely bag of Quikrete on display right outside our front door. After a couple of weeks on public view, Mother Nature whipped up a rainstorm and turned it into a permanent installation. It’s no Nina Canell, but it does have a certain devil-may-care charm.
The Gates?
Posted on | June 23, 2010 | No Comments
AT&T Commercial or Christo & Jeanne-Claude Ripoff?
When you have to proclaim explicitly during your TV ad that it’s not related to what everyone thinks it is, it’s probably a pretty good sign that you’re stepping on someone’s intellectual property (namely work by the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude).
Not Art
Posted on | June 3, 2010 | No Comments
Un graffito or conceptual art?
Wander around Cambridge long enough and you’ll notice the “Not Art” tag peppered citywide. So if it’s conceptual graffiti, is it art?
Image courtesy of wayneandwax.
Taxi Fire
Posted on | June 3, 2010 | No Comments
Cab on fire or objet d'art?
While biking home from work a taxi ahead of me suddenly burst into flames. My first thought – having recently seen a video by the Danish artists’ group Superflex called Burning Car (2008) – was, “Is this real?”
(Luckily, the cabbie got out safely.)
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