According to www.newsweek.msnbc.com an upcoming art show in London will have a display of preserved dead bodies as an exhibit. I believe that art can be a very versatile form of self expression, but this just seems a bit out-there…
This has been going on for a very long time; do a google on [/url=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&q=plastination”]Plastination.
Bear in mind that, in the young, vibrant, dynamic, iconoclastic world of “BritArt”, just about anything can be (and often is) considered “art”.
(Personally, I would love to see a Damien Hirst self-portrait… does that make me a bad person?)
On a wider note, it does appear that, wanky as it seems, if someone says something is art, then it is - BritArt or othewise.
There’s tons of philosophical argument about it that I can’t be bothered to find on the web. The days of art being mere “truth” and “beauty” are over… I could fart into a bottle and someone (Saatchi maybe?) would buy it if I were well-enough known. I don’t doubt that sometime in the future there will be an ‘art murder’ or something equally obscene.
Whether or not you’d want it hanging on the wall is now irrelevant.
Mmm. I should, perhaps, point out that I don’t have a per se problem with modern/minimalist/conceptualist art… i just feel it’s, well, getting a bit old now…
I mean, the idea of treating an everyday object as if it were art was intellectually provocative and challenging… when the Dadaists first thought of it. Nearly a hundred years ago.
And I dislike the “anti-Establishment” image so many of these artists try to project. Let’s face it, artists like Hirst, patrons like Saatchi, administrators like Serota are the arts establishment these days, it’s captious to pretend otherwise.
And I also dislike the implied elitism… the way such-and-such a piece is supposed to jolt me out of my bourgeois complacency and “make me think about things in different ways”. I don’t need to be made to think. I’m capable of a quite adequate degree of innovative cogitation all by my little old self.
And, of course, it’s so much easier to fake being a conceptual artist. If I want to pose as a painter, I’ll need to learn how to paint… but all I need to do to pose as a conceptual artist is type up a label that says something like The Exegesis of Irreal Forms, Part XI, by Steve Wright MA, £7500 o.n.o. and stick it on any old tat I happen to have handy. (The MA is in Linguistics, but the art-buying public don’t need to know that, do they?) Of course, it could be argued that the mere act of posing as a conceptual artist is, in itself, a work of conceptual art… in which case, this post is now a work of art (something I’ve never been able to say before).
OK. I’ll stop now. Four good reasons why I am a crass blinkered Philistine. Should be good enough for anyone.
I don’t think that the Gunther von Hagens (the man behind the Body Worlds show) would describe it as an “art” show. In fact I believe he has gone on record as saying that it is not intended as “art”. For what it’s worth I think he sees it as an educational anatomical exhibition, artfully arranged.
Embra
Is taxidermy art? Is certainly takes craftmanship if it is well done.
Oooh, I must find out where that exhibition will be, and hit their musuem shop—I’ve been LOOKING for a skinned corpse to hang over the sofa.
Oh really, Daaahhhling, skinned corpses are soooo last season.