A friend of mine sent this to me a couple weeks ago and it just seems to really fit the whole idea of what is art and why? I should say that I absolutely adore Mark Rothko and this is in no way an opinion I hold but I think it is an important, if very much joking, statement. I hope you like it as much I as I do. I can only post this because I do think Mark Rothko is so f-ing special :)
I'm glad you got a kick out of it, Lydia. I think Mark Rothko is f-ing special, too. Nevertheless, Blake Wright's view as espoused in his cartoon above is certainly not uncommon. (Wright's other cartoons are hilarious, too.)
ReplyDeleteAs for your Duchamp post, I think it's art... but that's mainly because I think that whoever takes charge of a piece (note that I did not say "create") has the right to make that call.
When I first saw a replica exhibited, I was quite young, and I rolled my eyes. I think that, knowing nothing about a piece that is derivative of Duchamp's, I would likely do the same today, but now mostly because there is nothing new about it. That is not to say that art must continuously reinvent the wheel to be valuable; rather, almost all of the value that I derive from the Duchamp piece has to do with its originality and the boundaries it pushed in the art world. Seeing essentially the same thing done over and over again without adding a new perspective bores me, especially in readymade art. There are other forms of artistic expression that I find much more pleasing, both visually (or not) and emotionally.
Gah, art gets complicated right quick!