> Michael Libby wrote > Given trends in the art world over the last 80 years, a big dog and a > large hardhat are not really much worse than some of what has been called > art-- after all, they're both distinctly reminiscent of all of > Oldenberg's oversized everyday objects and bring also to mind stuff like > Warhol's soup can. And in the end "real" art is there for its own sake-- > not to remind people of where to shop. I can't speak to whether most of > this modern art, whether designed by a corporate ad department or a > starving artist was subsidized or not, though. But I can say I think > people overestimate how much money the arts community gets from tax > funding. > There is lots of art all over downtown and that statue > gets more attention than any of it, from what I can tell. Maybe because, > in spite of being 100% about a TV show, Mary isn't some vague modern art > nonsense that people can't connect with.
Chris Responds: Warhol's and Oldenberg's art, however, was "news" in the era it appeared - more importantly, pop art had a capacity to reflect critically on the rise of the post war consumer culture. Warhol's soup cans and Oldenberg's soft sculptures, though "dumb," still had a sharp, ironic edge - and people got the joke. There's nothing terribly innovative about painting a corporate logo or a jar of Skippy peanut butter nowadays - that moment in art history is over. Jeff Koons, who was featured at the Walker several years back with his puppy dog sculptures and huge fantasy porn photos, is the inheritor of the pop tradition (you might remember him for his huge ceramic piece of Michael Jackson seated with his pet chimp, Bubbles.) Koon's art concerns explorations and subversions of modernist notions of taste - probably the last standing category of high modernism. So to speak, Warhol kicked the door open, Koons took it off the hinges. Speaking of kicking, Koons is probably doing that to himself right now for not having proposed the Mary sculpture - it's right up his alley. But what the Mary sculpture demonstrates is that we don't need a Jeff Koons anymore, nor the ironic quotation marks that bracket so much of Pop art. Some of the more "elitist" types might mentally put the quotation marks back when they view the Mary sculpture - as a matter of comfort - but for most viewers, the Mary sculpture is what it is, and they discern no irony (becase it generates none) nor underhanded critique. In short, there is no joke. It's purely affirmative. And that's what's so damn strange about it. It invites no critical or reflective capacity at all. It may as well be a TV screen instead of a sculpture - I simply stare back at it. After all, it celebrates no one but the masses of TV viewers. Perhaps this is liberating. But frankly, I don't know how to feel liberated by this yet. Don't know if I want to. Call me a curmudgeon. Chris Beckwith Ward 6 _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
