Here is a picture of a painting that just sold at Sotheby's 2009 Art Auction for $9,266,500. Thats right. $9.26 Million!
Got $9.2M To Throw Away? How About A Painting With Nothing More Than 8 Black Lines? Only $1.15M Per Line.
It would be fine if someone spent over $9M for something worthless if that $9M would do some good. But when it's just passed from one rich person to another it's a sad waste. If the money was used to buy $9M of groceries or cars or something where it was put back into the economy, I wouldn't mind so much.
What do you think? Is this a "Bonehead Award?" or am I just an imbecile when it comes to understanding fine art? You decide.
6 comments:
Not exactly what I would call fine art. But, I guess when you have money to blow, you taste is different.
I think is ugly and not worth 9 mil!
Cyrena makes art that puts this crap to shame. Yes, they get my vote for bone head and the biggest waste of money there is. Who would hang that stupidity on their wall?
I like it but wouldn't pay money for it. I'd get out my ruler and my big, fat, stanky, sharpy marker and make it myself.
And to answer "why is a wise man and a wise guy opposites?"... I would say they're not. They are the same. They are both oxymorons! hah.
Bill,
I'm not going to pretend I know much about this stuff, but I know a little... My sister's an artist and we've had discussions about abstract art that some would say that "any kid could paint". But the point of art is not necessarily to impress, but to inspire. You can produce the most technically impressive art but it could also be complete unoriginal garbage.
Its why I love Bob Dylan music so much even though his sound is so intentionally everyman...
I also remember when my wife and I were first married (and earlier) we went to this concert at ASU where this pianist performed music composed by John Cage.
Cage is most famous for a piece called four and a half minutes where the pianist literally gets up on stage and sits still for that length of time. The idea is that every sound in the concert hall - the creakiness of the seats, the occasional cough, even the silence itself - is music.
With minimalist art, abstracts like this one, the idea is is that the color itself, the lines, the shapes and its most simple is beautiful as well.
Here's a quote from a website I dug up:
"Sleek and highly structured, this composition of lines and planar fields of white embodies the tenents of Neo-Plasticism, the highly intellectual and avant-garde artistic movement which Piet Mondrian championed in the 1920s and 1930s. The genesis of this movement can be traced to Mondrian's return from Holland to his studio in Paris in 1919. While the outlines of Neo-Plasticism had been articulated earlier in 1917 with the publication of De Stijl, an aesthetic manifesto created in collaboration with Theo van Doesburg, it was in his austere Parisian studio that Mondrian painted his first Neo-Plastic compositions using a completely abstract, geometric pictorial language. This return to an urban environment marked the beginning of a period of intense activity devoted to developing the style that would dominate his work. "In the metropolis, beauty expresses itself more mathematically," he had written prior to his return to the French capital. "Therefore it is the place out of which the mathematically artistic temperament of the future must develop, the place out of which the New Style must emerge."
The reason that this piece is worth so much is not just because people liked the art, but because the painter was so innovative and famous. He pushed boundaries and made history in the art world...
You could say that you could paint the same thing, but then you didn't. Nobody else did at the time. And if you did it now, it would be a poor copy.
Again, I'm blowing smoke largely, but I guess I just try to be as open minded as art as possible.
Once when me and some friends (pre-marriage) were at the local art museum, I saw what I thought was an art installation in some corner of the museum, and I looked at it for a while. One of my friends mentioned it was just something under construction...
See, to me everything is art... :-)
Scott,
I hear you did your own post on this and I'll go check it out when I can. For the moment I just want to say this:
Sometimes I think music appreciation gets in the way of appreciating life. I have the hardest time attending any kind of concert that my kids are in. It's not that I'm critical, it's just that it's irritating. I like for music to be well rehearsed, in tune, together, and of a decent quality. You just can't get that with a bunch of little kids and amatuer/volunteer conductors. Bill, on the other hand, is very impressed at any point that children perform because he never did. (Sorry to drag you into this Bill!) He enjoys seeing his kids in action and can appreciate all the effort that was put forth. How about a symphony concert? He'd fall asleep and/or be bored out of his mind. I LOVE it.
Just thought that was an interesting observation when it comes to art in the musical form. Obviusly neither of us (Bill or I)really appreciate the visual arts.
H
Post a Comment