There is no found art
I took a profoundly bad Philosophy of Art class at University. I can elaborate. But not now.
Anyway, my thesis was that art is process, not product. If you end up with an object or a text at the end, that’s fine, and people can inspect it, but the art part is done with when the product is generated. Paint a picture and burn it: you’ve accomplished an artistic endeavor.
My professor hated this argument. As a powerful counterexample, he brought in a matted and framed piece, in oils on fabric. It was beautiful. He challenged me whether this was art. I immediately assented. Then, as his devastating blow, he explained (I wrote exclaimed, which works, too) that this was a rag for cleaning brushes that he had fished out of the art department’s trashcan. Tada, found art.
No, I countered, you have found beauty. The “art” is fishing it out of the trashcan and framing it!
Anyway, that annoyed him. But, so, long story, there is no found art. But found beauty? I’d stare at this picture I took today in a gallery for hours:
The Salaryman
Email subscription
October 26th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Isn’t that Magrittish? They everyman, the salaryman, redundant, identical to his peers, made to wait outside the fancy door until someone is ready to scrub the floor with him? Mop-tops instead of bowler hats?