Skip to main content

Dead artists always bring out an older, richer crowd.


I appreciate good art, I really do. The problem is that there is surprisingly little of it. While the good stuff does exist, the majority of modern art in Tasmania today is more likely to resemble a junkyard of any old crap with a five hundred word bit of justification sticky-taped up on the wall next to it.

Honestly, if bullshitting equates to art, then say hello to Monet!

What compounds my distaste, is the fact that most of the bullshitting is all so clichéd and predictable. Man, if all you've got to do is ramble on, at least make it original!

That's why my eye was drawn to this little bugger above. Is it art?

It is nestled in what used to be a working port, and features a little plague that someone has managed to work up in their spare time:


Of course, the mysterious art critic loses marks for failing to close their quotation marks, an odd capitalisation of the word "foundry" and "bollard", "where" instead of "were", both misspelling and not capitalising "Picasso", the grammar Nazi within can't let that slide, but I appreciate the effort more than some of the other efforts around here!

That said, like Mr or Ms "Thru" the other day, I call nong!

Comments

Sue said…
You forgot to mention the capital B in bollard, the 'where' instead of 'were', the misspelling of Picasso and the the lack of a comma where there should be one!
I HATE bad spelling and grammar too...so you can imagine how frustrating my days are... working in the education system.
And a bollard is a bollard is a bollard....???
Kris McCracken said…
Sue, I meant to go back and add that (pre-post you see). Corrected now!

You should try working at university level, where one may make the (erroneous) assumption that the barely literate are excluded.
smudgeon said…
As someone who attended "art school" for two years, I always thought the major problem with most art students (who eventually grow out of being defiantly snotty and emerge with their degrees as as the essence of smugness) is they think they're being awfully clever when they, for instance, stick a poorly written plaque on a bollard.

As a photography student, I was naturally above all that hoodwinking & self indulgence...
Kris McCracken said…
Me, I wouldn't last in art school. I would have no doubt been driven to kill some one.

First year philosophy was difficult enough. So many imbeciles, so little clue as to their own cluelessness!
KL said…
Honestly, I don't get the head and tail of modern day sculptures, though I get some understanding of paintings.
Beth said…
Ah Kris, I see a kindred soul destined to wander the streets with a bottle of white-out looking for those offensive "grocers' apostrophes" on restaurant menus and billboards.
yamini said…
I share ur sentiments regarding most of the "MODERN ART" doing the rounds today.

Just because one can't understand what the hell is there on the canvas shouldn't qualify it as a "masterpiece". Really, now!!!
Sue said…
What frightens me the most in the school system though, Kris, is the fact that it is the teachers who are just as likely to be the ones who misspell more than the students!
magiceye said…
strange but true..
stromsjo said…
Art can certainly be pretentious nonsense. Then again, if we all liked all works of art, they wouldn't be very provocative.
Most of the "great" works of modern art are a great joke. I think that works made by Donatello, Miquelangelo, DaVinci, Velazquez, Goya, Monet, Manet, Renoir, ... can't be compare with many of the actual works of modern art.
There was a spanish sculptor and painter named Miró (I don't know if you know him) that I don't understand his works. He usually painted a red point in a big white picture: is this art?
Kris McCracken said…
KL, people like Damien Hurst get me. I mean, really, it’s all nonsense! Yet the market values it in the millions!
Kris McCracken said…
Beth, it is a hard existence!
Kris McCracken said…
Yamini, it’s the erosion of actual skills that get me, especially when so often they are passed over because of better PR!
Kris McCracken said…
Sue, it just isn’t valued as much. I blame violent video games!
Kris McCracken said…
Magiceye, indeed!
Kris McCracken said…
Per, what about poo in a can?
Kris McCracken said…
MurciaDailyPhoto, *some* of Miró’s paintings impress me, just like Franz Marc, Kandinsky and (especially) Paul Klee, but the parade of imitators and the minimalists (visual arts) depress me. I mean (literally) I can do that!

Hirst pisses me off the most, because he's a "concept" guy. He doesn't even do the work! Honestly, all he does is come up with some bullshit idea, someone else paints a few spots on a plate or stuffs a sheep, and the money comes rolling in.

I must be thick or something, because I don't understand the attraction, it seems to me the most ludicrous scam around!
yamini said…
I agree to that.
Kris, I'm agree with your response.
Kris McCracken said…
MDP, even better!
stromsjo said…
I felt like responding "well, if it's done in good taste" but no. Poo in a can is something we could do without.
Kris McCracken said…
Per, if only poo were gold, I'd be rich!
stromsjo said…
...and I too would be fairly wealthy...
Kris McCracken said…
Per, our house is a poo factory right now. The boys are churning them out and I am stupidly flushing them instead of canning them!

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.