Some local towns in my area decided that it would be really cool to do the “silly painted whatevers” thing, like, New York or somewhere has cows. Fiberglas cows painted bright silly colors, and mounted scattered around town. This started in Denmark or somewhere, and then other places thought it was really neato “art” so they decided to copy the concept. Somewhere else I forget has fish, and we got people. So there’s these ugly painted human figures scattered around suddenly. They are done poorly, both in terms of composition and technical execution. They are placed with no respect or proportion to their surroundings. After about three days locals ignore them entirely. There must have been government money invloved here; ordinary individuals don’t piss away dollars like this.
I toyed briefly with the idea of setting them on fire, but decided I liked the idea of dumping dog or cow shit on them better. - MC
If you say “tacky objets d’art”, does that imply that there are non-tacky objets d’art? I mean, isn’t objets d’art just a more polite way of saying “kitschy dust collectors”?
The flodfather was, for a while, collecting plates with steam locomotive motifs. I used to go to the collectors’ plate stand at the local farmers’ market with him. Nearby there was a stand selling homemade refrigerator magnets, another selling collectors’ cookie jars, another selling throw pillows with silk-screened photographs of various teen heartthrobs, and then there were the clocks and plaques made out of slices of cedar logs, the hand-knitted “cozies” for toilet paper rolls and teapots and egg baskets, the “Jesus is LORD” line of home decorating products…
Concentrated kitsch. Gawd I miss it. It’s sick, but I’d love to go back in time and just… WATCH.
My friend Vickie’s daughter recieved this on her confirmation, or baptism, or whatever, about 15 years ago:
Plastic Jesus on the cross, in a large seashell. Shell was encrusted with smaller shells in a “decorative” manner. When you plugged it in, Jesus lit up and spun slowly around, while the tune “Somewhere My Love” played. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP, I saw it with my own amazed eyes. Little Allison grew up with a highly inaccurate idea of what happened at the crucifixion.
If one tacky objet d’art is good, then a whole website devoted to them must be better. Check out disturbingauctions.com, a collection of the most warped offerings from eBay. My fav (selected specially for you, Eve) is the Clark Gable Candle.
“…they are done poorly, both in terms of composition and technical execution. They are placed with no respect or proportion to their surroundings. After about three days locals ignore them entirely. There must have been government money invloved here; ordinary individuals don’t piss away dollars like this.”
Chicago took the cows idea from Geneva, and then a bunch of cities copied the idea from Chicago, many adapting it by using fish, pigs, horses, etc. instead of cows, just as you stated.
Let it be noted that they copied it because, horror of horrors, IT WAS SUCCESSFUL! People came to Chicago in droves (pardon the pun) from not only all over the metro area but the rest of the country and all over the world to see the cows. You couldn’t walk ten yards downtown without running into:
a cow and, more importantly,
one or more tourists being photographed on or in front of it.
Were there some badly-done cows? Yes, but there were a lot of clever concepts well executed, too. Yes, a lot of the cows derived their humor from puns, and therefore were somewhat kitschy if one looks at it with a certain attitude. But thousands of people weren’t looking with that attitude, but in a spirit of fun and light-heartedness. The Cows on Parade let people know that Chicago is not a city that constantly takes itself seriously and expects all public sculpture and artwork to be High Art handed down by an intelligentsia to enlighten the masses (read: for the masses to puzzle at).
And about public money being “pissed away,” I don’t know how the program was run in your area, but the city of Chicago only provided some seed money, a bit of promotion, and some organization for our Cows on Parade. The individual cows were all sponsored by various groups, companies, etc. and they were auctioned – for tidy sums – after Cows on Parade was finished at the end of the summer.
Well, these Objets aren’t tacky in and of themselves, but what has been done with them is, IMHO, tacky in the extreme.
My inlaws have a couple of attractive Oriental vases with Chokin patterns on the front in gold. The vases, when displayed in the store, have little labels on the front that say “24K Gold”. My inlaws left these labels on the fronts of the vases in the display case so that everyone would know that, yes, they own a bit of gold. My stepson, who was twelve at the time, pointed this out to me and asked why they’d do it. What could I say?
These are the same people who believe that “Joy” is the most wonderful perfume in the world because it bills itself as the most expensive. It doesn’t matter if it would gag a maggot.
I had the greatest decoration objects ever. I miss them horribly. I have no idea what happen to them.
I had bull frogs. There were 5 of them as part of a taxidermied bull frog band. One played the bongos, two played guitar, one played the sax, one played the trumpet. The instruments were made of wood. There were also two smaller reddish colored frogs sitting at a little wooden table drinking beer. I miss those things.
And the fact that I used to own a taxidermied bull frog band is completely unrelated to my username.
An older friend of my mother’s had a thing for stitching yarn onto sheets of pre-cut plastic, sort of like crewel or cross stitch (??), depending on whatever crafty item she wanted to make.
Anyhow, this lady made my mother a little nameplate that sat up by itself and read, simply, “Jesus”.
My mother had it sitting out on the telephone station in the kitchen, as the woman had just been there the day before for lunch and my mother wanted to be nice.
My sister and I were there the next day, and noticed the little plaque. We cracked up totally. I remember my sister lifting up the plaque and asking if it was what Jesus had on his desk at work.
Heh, heh.
(I guess that was about the tackiest craft item I ever saw, but I love that sort of stuff generally, so I think my tolerance is pretty high.)
OMIGOD! Kinkade! I can’t stand his stuff. I make fun of it everywhere I go. Imagine my amusement when my boss (who is engaged to my Other Boss (long story)) told me that they were looking at Kinkade stuff for their cabin up north.
The funniest thing was me mentioning this to my Other Boss, who wrinkled his nose in disgust. Meeting the two of them together, you would think that she’d have more taste then he would. It’s the other way around.
Allison got sent home from Sunday School with a note, because when the teacher asked, “what happened after Our Lord was crucified?” Allison piped up with, "He lit up, spun around and played “Lara’s Theme!”
. . . And I needn’t tell you what happened when—in the mid-1980s—the kiddies were asked to “draw a picture of the Madonna?”
It’s really too bad you can’t actually SEE these things: the ‘organizer’ put them in such scattered places and far from the road in most cases. The point was to put them in the downtown arts district (pfft!) where anyone driving through downtown could see them. Though I have to admit the ones connected to the walls are pretty neat-o - I liked “Sleepy Time Sal”.
Eve - "He lit up, spun around and played “Lara’s Theme!” -
that’s a hoot!
I live in a small Ozark town that still has a corner dimestore. Just last week, I was walking past the store with my baby, when he got all excited, and started chanting “Dog! Dog!”, pointing wildly at the window. Inside, I saw an array of stained glass lamps, lit up to draw the eye of unsuspecting passers-by. Most of them were almost pretty, but there was a smallish puppy lamp up front and center. He was dark brown and white, with arresting chartreuse eyes. Because most of his body was semi-opaque, his eyes shone forth with evil intensity. I thought to myself, “That thing belongs on Disturbing Auctions”. The thing that troubles me most is that the little dog lamp was the first one sold.
Latchhooking. It’s for people who don’t have good enough vision or steady enough hands to do cross-stitch, knitting, et. al. I think you can only work from a kit: there’s no other way to get the plastic with the picture painted on it, and the necessary pieces of wool, all exactly one inch long. The concept, and the patterns, are all totally seventies, almost more so than macrame.
The fish are here in Baltimore. I think they’re kinda neat.
Oh jeez, that’s something my in-laws do, too. All kinds of kitschy home shopping channel “collectible” crap, and the MIL leaves the “24K Gold” sticker on it. I think she thinks it’s more classy that way. :rolleyes: