Some of my friends bought this Hanukkah package, and want to see the painting cut up. What do you guys think?
I’m too much a saver to vote cut it up.
From the article:
Did they read their own link? More like “Donated a small percentage to charity and spent the rest on video games, nerd tchotchkes and gold vibrators”. Which is fine – it’s their money to do whatever with but “donated to charity” is a strangely, well, charitable description of what the company did.
Anyway, I voted to save the art piece.
I voted to save it.
Years and years ago there was a fable - probably in Reader’s Digest - about the Commies taking over the U.S.A., where the teachers (who were now godless indoctrinators) got all the flags out of the classrooms by cutting them up and giving each student a piece for their very own.
Ergo: the best way to get Art out of our lives is to cut it up and give everyone a piece.
If a famous artist created something and then offered this … everyone can have a small piece or we donate it whole to a museum that wants it and will display it … I’d call it a clever bit of marketing if not actually a sort of performance art.
Opting however to destroy something by a great artist just for kicks, even if it is not one of the greater works and if there are 49 other copies of it … somehow disturbs me. Its not blowing up the great stone Buddhas but it still results in a similar feeling in my gut. In each case I know it just paper … or stone … but it still bothers me.
To the small minority that has voted to destroy it … why? To have a 1.5 mm grey wisp that came from a Picasso print?
This. If you really want a Picasso, the least expensive of them is within reach of regular people. He painted an enormous amount of works over decades, so they aren’t nearly as rare as other artist’s pieces.
Cutting up that one seems very wasteful.
“The Children’s Story” in Reader’s Digest in 1964, by James Clavell, author of King Rat, Noble House, Shōgun, and other works.
People who can’t leave their mark by creating something leave their mark by destroying something.
In 1982 Clavell wrote, produced, and directed a film adaptation of the short story that appeared on network TV.
Back to the original topic, I immediately thought of “Great Square Inches in Art”, a satire ad that promised to send subscribers quality reproductions of Mona Lisa’s smile, Adam’s finger from the Sistine Chapel, etc. It was written by Margaret Bennett in 1963 for Saturday Review, and there was a recording of it read by Robert Conrad (not the actor), an announcer at WCLV-FM. And many years ago (at The Museum Store, I believe, in an upscale mall) I saw a set of refrigerator magnets that were selected chunks of Michelangelo’s David (IIRC an eye, the nose, fingertip, mouth).
It’s one in a series of 50 linocut prints. I voted “cut it up” just for the fun of it. Who cares? It’s not Guernica or some one-of-a-kind print.
This, more or less. It’s not unique, it’s not even rare - there are 49 others out there that are not significantly different. It’s not priceless (according to the article, it’s only $14,000- as compared to a painting of his that sold for $179Million earlier this year). It doesn’t illuminate anything in particular about art, art history, or Picasso. There doesn’t seem to be any sentimental or emotional attachment to this exact print. And from what I can tell, there seems to be at least one more of the prints already on display in a Chicago gallery that is literally down the street from the Art Institute, so the proposed donation doesn’t open it up to a whole new audience.
It’s also kind of ugly.
I thought that “gold vibrator” was surely an exaggeration. Nope.
People should not be in the habit of destroying art.
True, but it still seems to have more value as a whole than cut into little pieces. And it’s not even some busy painting with lots of little details where you might get a recognizable figure on it. You’re about 90% likely to get a blank (well, black) piece of paper purportedly from a Picasso lithograph or, if you’re really lucky, a scrap of paper with a line on it.
I just don’t see any value in destroying it and “funsies” seems less valuable to me than the piece itself.
I wish I had purchased this package so I could vote “no.” It’s a terrible thing to do.
I appreciate that explaining why some things strike some as “fun” is as hard to explain as what is “funny” is, but that is the part I do not get. What strikes you as “fun” about destroying a minor limited edition work of art?
Again, acknowledged that this is not quite clubbing a baby seal to death and distributing little bloody bits about, destroying a Stradivarius and giving everyone who paid a splinter of it, or blowing up a giant stone Buddha and sending out a bunch of pebbles to everyone. And while many do hold art by a great artist as being somewhat sacred this is not ripping up a Torah or pissing on a Koran. But I have a hard time understanding the “fun” as being anything other than similar in form and at best the same “fun” of kicking down someone else’s sandcastle.
Would it be just as much fun if it was just a poster of the work that many more could be made of? If not then the fun seems to be contingent upon the fact that it is something held as valuable to others and of which there is a very finite supply of; the fun is contingent upon the fact that others do care.
I am honestly at a loss to understand the fun that the few here see and honestly wonder if there is something, anything, more to it than just the pleasure of knocking down something that others value and you do not.
Again, minor work, only 49 other copies exist* but still … there are others …, not the greatest loss to hit the art world here … but the why this would be fun still puzzles me.
*Interestingly the ones who would benefit from the destruction are those who own the other 49. The value of those other 49 of the series each goes marginally up as a result of a more limited remaining supply and of the attention the destruction would garner.
It just amuses me, and I like Picasso and modern art in general. Why? I don’t know. It just does. ETA: Plus I wouldn’t mind having my own “piece” of Picasso. Like I said, it ain’t Guernica, just a print of which there are many copies.
Just as I would find burning money grotesque when so many are in need, I find destroying something worth thousands of dollars on a whim to be fairly disgusting.
Cut it up. Its a print and not unique. Picasso would probably approve.