Thursday 31 August 2006

,

A stick sharpened at both ends


For years experts and amateur observers alike have been debating what does and doesn't constitute art. Personally I don't understand why the issue is considered by so many fence-sitters to be unfathomable, so I'm going to lay the matter to rest right here and now.

A composition is definitely not art if putting it together requires no creative talent whatsoever. There, done, it's that simple. If the opposite was true anyone and everyone could be considered an artist and the word would immediately be expunged from the dictionary; 'human' already covers every member of the populace.

Quintessential to this pretentious, manufactured is-it-isn't-it tug of war is Kira O'Reilly's Inthewrongplaceness. Let's get real here: this work of whatever consists of a deranged naked women hugging a dead pig for four hours. No Kira, it's not about "pigginess, unexpected fantasies of emergence and interspecies metamorphoses", it's a larger-than-life warning against the perils of 'care in the community' programmes. Yes dear, the experience may have left you "making fiercely tender and ferocious identifications with the pig as stand-in, double, twin, doll and imaginary self", but that doesn't make what you're doing art, does it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Creatively vacuuming candeur out of humain veins. Hurray for the emerging Homo Cynicalus X-Treme species? Oh, sorry, it's already been around for a while? ;)

You would undoubtedly appreciate a peek at this self-decomposing piece of art: http://www.snopes.com/politics/arts/meatdress.asp

dreamkatcha said...

Ack, what a monstrosity! Even so you can see a degree of time, effort and skill has gone into making it. You can't say the same for Ms O' Reilly's guff, I mean stuff.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least she had to THINK about it an invent her scenario ^-^.

I didn't quite get whether she is actually killing the pig while performing (I'll bet you chuckle at that word) or used a ready-for-the-show-already-cold animal.

dreamkatcha said...

Thankfully the pig was dead to begin with - she bought it from a local abattoir. PETA are already on her back for butchering a carcass so I'm sure she'd be shut down in a heartbeat if she was actually killing the animal live for 'art'.

To add insult to injury, Kira's fee is being paid for by the taxpayer (as well as lottery money which could instead be put to charitable use).