So one of the WalMart stock boys brought the whole gang of us to see this show at the NYC Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Next time, I’d like to unicycle between the two nude women, though it would be a very tight fit.
What kind of experiences have you had with modern art?
“NEW YORK — Laurence Lallier slipped carefully between two naked women facing each other in a narrow doorway at the Museum of Modern Art.
“I didn’t want to step on their feet,” said Lallier, a student from Montreal. “We feel shy and they don’t, and they’re the ones that are naked.”
When the artist Marina Abramovic and her then-companion Ulay first performed the piece, called “Imponderabilia,” in Bologna, Italy in 1977, the police showed up. New York’s finest are unlikely to interfere with the version that opened at MoMA on Sunday, though some museum-goers may choose not to do the sideways limbo between bare bodies.
Elsewhere in the exhibit two clothed people touch fingertips, two others sit back to back with their hair entwined and a naked woman reclines with a skeleton (not a real one) lying on top of her. The performers, re-enacting pieces originated by Abramovic alone or with Ulay, are statue-still.”
I’m going to stand on one leg in in the street and shout “Bottom titty bum bum” and see if it makes people uncomfortable. It will be a groundbreaking social experiment which demands that we examine our reactions to being confronted with puerile attention seeking.
Either that or I may spend several years learning the complex sets of skills required to be a great painter, sculptor, musician or composer.
Imponderabilia may have been signifigant/“groundbreaking” to a certain degree back in the 70s but nowadays nudity has been pretty much accepted by the mainstream.
Only truly brilliant shock-art endures. Social standards change and what confronted the sensibilities of good honest people way back when, is not as big a deal anymore.
For the historical value as well as just for the experience, I’m sure it’s great as a replay, but I don’t think it’s “the same”. It’s a completely different environment and it packs a completely different punch (standing naked in a time and place where that sort of thing is condemned is far different from doing the same thing in a place where it’s condoned, even though you’re still neked…)
That was well thought out. If art is to “shock” (or at least surprise, disturb, challenge, confront, etc.) it needs to break a strong taboo. Nudity and near nudity are all around us in advertisements and on the internet.
But that said, it’s easy to shock. Just find the biggest taboo and break it. Any fool can do that.
So standing a couple of models naked in a corridor is not art, in my book, it’s just showing off.
Now paint a picture of someone naked in a social situation, or a whole room of people naked but behaving normally, or use nudity to make one of the subjects of the painting vulnerable or ridiculous and it’s art. And if the paintings aren’t “representational” or “realistic” but convey the idea well, then it’s still art.
But all these piles of bean tins, naked models, pickled sharks and “back of an envelope” art exhibitions are just the King’s new clothes.
We live in a society where people are so keen to “express themselves” that they overlook that they sometimes have nothing interesting to express, and often have no ability to articulate it anyway.
Doing that can usually guarantee serious consequences though…
anyhow, true shock art isn’t “shocking” just for the sake of being shocking. It could be the way an idea/question/etc is posed or dipiction of an event/practice/belief/blah blah blah, but if it isn’t endowed with some sort of story, meaning or message, I’m usually not all that interested.
On the other hand, a writer can be just as poetic with ugly words as with beautiful ones even if they aren’t writing about much of any signifigance.
So true. So much music and art today is just creative regurgitation. Instead of being inspired by artists and expanding, developing and reshaping art, people nowadays just copy their idols.
The nude show is in a MUSEUM of ART, and museums are rarely the place of NEW. They are the place of “established.” Shock does not belong in museums, it belongs in art galleries and performance spaces. This show is a retrospective of the pieces this artist has done for the past 50 years.
As for our example, Mike, if I may make an analogy, you might say doing a unicycle show on stage wearing a glittery costume doing artistic tricks is art, but doing ten foot drops in MUni gear is just showing off?
Interesting that a few here want to exclude some art from how they narrowly define art. That’s the role of social conservatives, isn’t it?
I’m not sure that it’s fair to think of the whole exhibit as shock art, when from what I can see only part of it involves nudity and besides the doorway squeeze bit and maybe the Luminosity work, the rest doesn’t seem particular interested in rubbing the viewers face in it.
I liked this man’s sentiment regarding the woman with the skeleton:
Except when one tries to walk barefoot into a store.
I think that what is perhaps still true is that life in our society is largely constructed so as to create a sense of personal space which alienates us from people we do not expressly give permission to approach. Maybe the most interest part of the exhibit is that it contains a warning sign at the entrance allowing people to intentionally avoid the human form. This might be social progress and imperative to individual rights, I don’t know. But the fact that I actually find it interesting to be able to go to an exhibit where I can feel free to sit and have a staring contest with a middle aged women I know nothing about, demonstrates to me that there are certain experiences I’m too afraid to have unless somebody guides me through them. Whether the artist deserves accolades for this perhaps unskilled labor, is also uncertain.
I would not characterize “The artist is present” which you probably viewed via love feed as a staring contest, but I’ll give you that art is in the eyes of the beholder.
Did you go to the show yet?
About the sign: For a period, authorities covered specific spots of nudity from previous centuries with painted fig leafs or added marble fig leafs on sculpture. Almost all museums have nudity in paintings and sculpture today. So maybe every museum should have a sign at the door. Did Renaissance use nudity to shock? I don’t think so.
But it DID shock some, so much so that in later centuries, it was prohibited/censored.
I don’t think she meant to shock years back when she started this. Don’t forget, the Broadway shows Hair and Oh Calcutta both had full frontal nudity in the late 60s. It was a reflection of the culture, the hippies “free love” movement, and the sexual revolution.
You make another good point: Even the standing nudes are much like Renaissance sculpture. They stare ahead, not making eye contact, much like sculpture. When the social conservatives move back into power, the artists next museum retrospective will have the same nude models, but wearing fig leafs!
That is quite obviously a representation of the constant struggle of the creative mind imprisoned by the cruel lack of funding to buy paint, with the result cleverly and ironically juxtaposed with the silly amount of money they were probably paid for absolutely no effort.
Or something like that.
I’m not a great fan of (a lot of) modern art - Emperor’s new clothes, like Mike (nearly) said.
(When I say “not a great fan of” I of course mean “think it’s all poo”)
If you were alive in the 1800s when Impressionism (Monet, Renoir) was Modern Art, care to speculate if you would have been among those who said it was mostly poo?
I’m not sure what I would have thought at the time - presumably the general environment has an effect on our taste, so things may have been different. But no, I’m not really a big fan of that style either. On the other hand, it does show skill and artistic merit - there’s a difference between what is poo and what is just not to my personal taste.
TBH though, I’m not really much of a “pictures on the wall” person at all. The type of art I tend to be attracted to are more “things” - wood carvings or sculptures, things you can pick up. Some functional pieces of engineering can be art IMO - a good bicycle frame for example, or Jogi’s original 2:1 externally geared unicycle - I’d hang that on my wall before a painting any day (am I weird?)
I’m sure there is lots of “modern” art that is good - but I can’t agree that there’s any merit in a blank canvas, dead cow in a box, pile of bricks, empty room, glass of water on a shelf, etc…
Impressionism, cubism, pointilism, etc., all require not only an idea, but also an artistic vision, and some skill in execution.
Putting a couple of nude models in a corridor, or displaying an unmade bed, a bag of rubbish, a pile of old tyres, or a blank oblong of canvas all require an idea, little or no artistic vision, and little or no skill in execution.
Maybe the difference is between “look at me” and “look at this”.
Dig Dada? Here’s a well known piece by Marcel Duchamp which, although lacking in technicality, is regarded as a VERY brilliant and influencial piece.
Art dosn’t need to be technical or “sophisticated” to be art, but it has have be signifigant of one or more concepts, emotions, etc… The Dadists showed that a composition didn’t have to be a traditional painting, sculpture, or whatever. Anything could be art if it was interpreted and viewed as such. They came up with a style which was condemned as un-skilled (although most of them were wonderful draftsmen), sophmoric and even degenerate. In retrospect however, Dadism is regarded as a signifigant movement art that gave way to surealism.
The problem is that people see fame, money or whatever in art (or in some instances, probably sincerely want to express themselves through art) but they don’t want to take the time to cultivate their creativity or their technical ability and become a true artist, so they develope a pseudo-neo-Dadist form of “art” where they can obtain all the fame and glory of a master artist for painting three differently colored triangles on a tilted canvas.
Like I said, Imponderabilia was signifigant in its own time, but at the moma, it should be viewed as Fountain is viewed. As an interesting/creative work of art which had an impact on people’s perception of art and/or certain concepts when they were first unveiled. I’m not saying that they are only interesting momentos from the evolution of art, people can still learn from them and be inspired from them or whatever, but the effect they had on the public back in the day has worn off.
