Recently a pair of “guerilla” performance artists (Jian Jun Xi and Yuan Cai) went into London’s Tate art gallery and, in an act of “Artistic Intervention”, pissed into Marcel Duchamps “artwork” titled “Urinal”. For the unfamiliar, the piece “Urinal” consists solely of the ceramic portion of a men’s urinal hung upon the wall without plumbing connections.
Does anyone else see the intense irony here? To me, most performance “art” is pure drivel. If you want to see real performance art, merely watch Michael Mochen’s juggling work on the “Great Performances” series.
Similarly, a lot of modern art is pure trash. Kooning’s (sp?) work of repackaged, stacked vacuum cleaners and ceramic retail dog statues are some of the most flagrant examples. Duchamp’s “Urinal”, however good a satire of the proto dadaist movement (or was he starting it?), is still difficult for me to classify as “real art”.
That two performance “artists” should trot up and use “Urinal” as a urinal, is sidesplittingly hilarious. These same two also stripped down, painted their bodies with anti-capitalistic slogans and had a pillow fight on another “artwork”, titled “My Bed” by Emin. That piece consisted of a dirty and messy bed strewn with condoms, soiled underwear and a vodka bottle. “My Bed” was recently sold for $225,000 this summer. Need I say more about the current “art” market?
I don’t know whether to scorn these two weirdos or give them medals. Why don’t you decide.
PS: For some background, the two performance artists’ first exhibit involved inviting people to their home to view a “live sculpture” of a breakfast scene complete with toast smeared with honey and human excrement.
[hijack]Hey Zenster, if you really wnat to see some good performance art you should head up to the Lab over the next week. The premier is tonight I believe.[/hijack]
Personally, I think it’s a great piece. I’ve frequently been overcome with the urge to piss on Duchamps work.
Medals all around.
I was about to post about how much I dislike “modern” art like the things you’ve described. But then I just thought about it and those “artistic” creations do bring forth some strong emotions. Mainly hostility on my part.
“It’s good art because it was created by good artists, and they say it’s good art.”
“How do we know they’re good artists?”
“Well, they created this good art.”
The nice thing about art, is that you don’t have to look at it. If you don’t think something is good art, don’t stare at it for three hours trying to figure out the meaning. Me? I can’t stand Bruce Connor. One or two of his film assemblages are good, the rest makes me uneasy. It’s extremely elitist. Like he’s some pope preaching to the unwashed masses. Duchamp, much as he annoys me, at least was able to poke fun at this. Generally, once an artist becomes established as a good artist, through more conventional art, they are given the freedom to experiment and do other stuff. You also have to look at art in context.
Try Eyvinde Earle. Although oversold for a while, this guy was once an animator for Disney. He produced the backgrounds for Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Fantasia. His style is a cross between Maxfield Parrish and M.C. Escher. Intense colors and geometric designs predominate in his beautiful landscapes.
I like most of Duchamp’s work, particularly “Nude descending a Staircase” and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors”. I recently saw some neat stuff he did exploring visual perception in the Met Museum of Modern Art. Nevertheless, I find someone actually pissing in the “Fountain” (That’s it’s actual title, not “Urinal”) to be pretty darn amusing. Of course, if they did not have permission, that’s vandalism. Were their actions art? Yes, in my opinion. Were their actions good art? Personally, I think pissing in the “Fountain” is a extremely funny play on Duchamp’s original premise. The rest of the stuff they’ve done? ::shrug:: I haven’t seen them, so I’m not going to say whether they’re any good or not. Just getting naked and smearing shit on things does not make “good” art, and shock for shock’s sake is often the refuge of the incompetent. Still, the hullabalo about “horrible modern art” reminds me of how the Fauvists got their name (a fauve is a “wild beast”, and a critic referred to them as that when he saw their avant-garde, brilliantly and wild colored pieces) and when a famous contemporary art critic said of one of Whistler’s gorgeous nocturnes, “I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” It seems complaining about the quality and exhorbinant cost of modern art is a perennial pursuit.
Well, I’m sorry, I think it was pretty bad because people have to clean it up. It IS funny, though!
But art just for the sake of shocking someone and creating controversy, like the shit covered portrait of Mary…that was just stupid. I mean, come on, you KNOW the guy did it just to piss people off!
However…I definitely prefer John Waterhouse…
Pre-Raphaelite… http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/
I like how people comment on the mary work with out even knowing much about it. I actually saw the piece, as well as several other pieces that the artist (a practicing catholic) did. It was not covered in Shit. It contained a lump of elephant dung, as almost all of his pieces do. If you aren’t told of it, you don’t really even notice that it’s there. It most certainly was not done to just shock people.
ONe of the more interesting pieces I’ve seen recently was called “Vern”. It’s a canvas 42 inches by 27 inches, and is the ashes of a cremated man. He lived 42 years before a stroke, 27 after. His wife donated the ashes to an artist. The man himself, vern, had wanted his ashes dumped in a potted plant at a museum so he could be near art for the rest of his life. He was an aspiring artist. I think it’s a profoundly touching piece, at the same time rather shocking.
My favorite modern artists? Sol Lewitt, Wayne Thiebaud, Bob Arneson, Jeanne Moje (hi mom!).
I heartily agree with all that you have said Gaudere. Thanks for the correct title of the peice BTW. Sadly, the two were actually vandalizing the piece. Due to all of the publicity I doubt that they will be able to claim urgency or confusion of the moment as mitigating factors. I have not been able to view a lot of Duchamps work personally, so I do not have an opinion about it except from what I know of “Fountain”.
I still think it is hilarious though. Duchamp must have known that this would happen at some point, by accident or not.
I did think it was funny. But—oddly enough—somehow it seems much funnier if the piece is titled “Urinal” than if the piece is titled “Fountain.” Why is that?..
Actually, if you are talking about the artwork that I believe you are, the actual painting was made out of elephant dung and paint; the dung is an intergral part, not just smeared on the piece. The artist is black (Chris Ofili, who won the Turner Prize for contemporary art), and traditional art in Africa often incorporated elephant dung. He uses it in many of his works, some for subjects he seems to genuinely revere, so I would not say that it is intended to be denigrating to the object portrayed in his work. (He is also, I believe, Roman Catholic.) There were small cutouts from pornography magazines surrounding Mary, that the artist said were intended to represent her fertility/sexuality, as well as evoke classical putti–of course, people screamed bloody murder about the “offensiveness” of that, too. Ofili is an established artist, and it certainly doesn’t seem he was intending to be offensive. Heck, Bacon’s work is considerably more offensive towards Catholics/the Pope, and genuinely seems intended to be so, as well as having a much stronger emotional impact.
But I’d add this: pissing in “The Fountain” conveys exactly the same message that DuChamp conveyed by putting “The Fountain” in an art museum. So either these guys are ignorant of their artistic forbear’s intention–in which case they’re pissing on the wrong piece–or they’re just plain unoriginal and redundant. It’s like they’re saying, “Oh! I get it! It’s a urinal!” To which I say, “Duh.”
I was a performance art major at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and I’ve seen a lot of very good performance art and a lot of really bad performance art (I’ve even seen pieces wherein shit-smeared bodies were valid and effective) and these guys’ work seems pretty derivative and inconsequential. FWI(IMHO)W.
Thank you again, Gaudere. I get incensed afresh every time someone trots out the common mischaracterization of this actually very reverential work. Elephant dung is not an uncommon sculptural medium in Ofili’s cultural background, a context which is almost never considered when ignorantly trashing his work.
Well, I like to think they were trying to make other people aware of Duchamp’s intention (people sometimes seems to think if it’s old it must be Serious Solemn High Art, and often miss some of the sillier and/or ironic intentions of famous artists becuase of that), and expand on it a little. If they really thought they were being soo avant-garde and innovative to piss in an ::ooh:: Work Of Art, they’re dumbkofts.
[MPSIMS hijack]
School of the Art Institute, eh, lissener? When’d you graduate? I went to NIU m’self, although I considered the School of the Art Institute for grad school. Got distracted by an actual Job, though.
"Were their actions art? Yes, in my opinion. Were their actions good art? Personally, I think pissing in the “Fountain” is a
extremely funny play on Duchamp’s original premise. "
Hmmm. When I was seventeen I got really drunk and walked home from a party. I passed out in the living room floor of my parents’ house, threw up and peed myself in my sleep.
Had my parents known that what I was doing was actually art then perhaps they wouldn’t have been so angry…
Nyyyyahhh!
IMHO hanging a urinal on the wall isn’t art, nor is pissing in it for poetic justice.
It’s just making a statement. It may be a valid statement, but it ain’t art.
I have not been able to view a lot of Duchamps work personally, so I do not have an opinion about it except from what I know of “Fountain”.