On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 8:37 PM, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote: > This thing about the flying dead cat as art is nonsense because the contraption > was not made to address any art issue. It can't be compared to all the > transgressive artworks that were mentioned because all of those did -- > intentionally and with clear success -- address art issues, either as art > historical issues or art philosophy/criticism issues. Strapping a freeze-dried > cat to a to radio controlled helicopter is more in tune with the novelty market, > like those inflated shark balloons that operate with a little radio control and > can 'swim' around the house. The kicker here is that the cat is an actual > animal, not plastic, however dead it may be. So it belongs to the whole genre > of the weird, novel, and just plain sicko, for which there is a well established > sympathy, if not an actual market, among the coarser types, usually male > gross-out adolescents. > > wc > >
Bart Jahnsen, the artist, seems to be pretty serious; here's his artist page (google translated from Dutch) http://tinyurl.com/c89p2h5 If you follow the links on the page (like to his CV, etc), google will translate them.. In any case, it shows that shooting the project down on the basis of not holding the proper papers won't work. The guy is, as they say, approved. But on what basis can one say it doesn't address art issues? I can think off hand of at least one -sort of an ironic poke at the other pieces mentionned. Or maybe a sideways homage to Jeremy Bentham and the auto-icon. It's easy enough to make up this stuff. But I've only seen a little of his work courtesy of the MSM and the webpage, so I am happy to wait before deciding. And of course, there's the issue of whether art actually has to address academic art issues to be art. That works to a large degree with fields like pure mathematics, but personally I don't have much truck with art pretending to be a science. Art seems to be more enduring when it reaches outside of such narrow confines. Cheers; Chris > ----- Original Message ---- > From: caldwell-brobeck <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Fri, June 8, 2012 4:47:52 PM > Subject: Re: "Flying cat turns heads at art show" > > On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 3:40 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 8:34 AM, caldwell-brobeck > <[email protected] >>> wrote: >> >>> Or maybe I'm just used to dealing with a small minded peanut gallery >>> stuffed on sour grapes. You know the sort, the ones that reduce >>> discussions to ad hominem attacks in order to avoid confronting >>> anything out of their normal purview. >>> >>> But back to aesthetics. If an important aspect of art is social >>> commentary, why not the helicopter cat? Is it really that different >>> from a meat dress? The comments on the video are interesting, being a >>> mix of complimentary and antagonistic. Were the artists aiming to give >>> people who hate art a reason to do so? Or is it a case of artists >>> working in one micro-culture doing something they thought creative >>> only to find it they've transgressed boundaries of the wider culture? >>> Should they care, if they are happy with their work? >>> >>> I also think Joseph's question "Why does stuff like that appear on >>> Yahoo?" pretty relevant; it leads to questions of how various media >>> probe the limits of acceptability in the continual search for markets. >>> >>> Exactly. In a society where the gatekeepers have been brushed aside to >> make a field of endeavor even more inclusive, the mass of wannabe's now >> feel that there only chance for recognition has to do more with standing >> out rather than creating something that has anything to do with quality. >> > > I guess I'm a bit more sanguine; I certainly don't have any beef > against the disappearance of gatekeepers; dirigisme in culture more or > less died in the end of the 19thC. I much prefer door openers (my > current favourite being Eric Kandel). > As for the Orvillecopter, apparently the artists have been offered > 100,000 pounds for it, so it certainly speaks to someone. > See the Telegraph: > http://tinyurl.com/c8qu2p7 > > And I do occasionally threaten my Corgi with being turned into a muff, > he'd make a good one. > > Cheers; > Chris
