In The Eye Of The Beholder
Last Friday, after getting into downtown Chicago and before going to the flist show, i went to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the first part of their 40th Anniversary Retrospective and an exhibit called "Sympathy For The Devil" which was about the influence of rock 'n' roll in contemporary art. Now, i'm not a big fan of a lot of contemporary art and think much of it was about the marketing. You know, the big black canvas that "signifies the deep dark yearning of the human psyche" or three fluorescent tubes that signify...well, something. The german master, Joseph Bueys, was represented by a felt suit and at one time admitted that he was in on the joke and could turn a pile of junk into art "simply by adding my name to it". This as opposed to self-promoting "naïve artists" like now-dead junkie Basquiat who was represented by a pencil scribble figure. i guess it's all about finding someone that likes your stuff who hopefully has a whole bunch of money. i mean, look at some of my crap! Of course, nobody's lining up to buy any of my stuff, either. But some stuff is simply amazing to look at such as Robert Longo's photographs and films (the picture above). The biggest kick was the original design work by Peter Seville for the cover of New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies album which totally deconstructed the process. The worst part of the whole experience was that, unlike the Art Institute down the street which has a masterpiece in every gallery and lets you photograph to your hearts content ("no flash, please"), the MCA was different. Even though a large number of works were created by reworking someone else's art, they had a bunch of goons in red t-shirts that said "FEAR NO ART" going around stopping people from taking pictures. What a bunch of hypocrites. So, in the true spirit of reutilizing art to create new art, i snuck some pictures anyway!
my friend, pinkpillbox, idolizes Jackie O. She was an amazing woman, but isn't the whole silkscreen concept kind of a ripoff of Warhol?
EDIT: Thanx to dedos for pointing out that it was, in fact, a Warhol which would explain why it looked so Warholian. DOH!!
One woman put some cool circles on the floor, then took a plastic owl (like the ones you'd put on barns to scare away other birds or critters) and dumped paint on it. Wow, far out, man!
Seems like i've seen this somewhere before. Right, ursuspersonatus?
OK, so they covered the floor with old records. Some were pretty cool records and i kept going along reading the labels saying, "...ooh, that's a good one...i got that one...oh, that one sucked...". But does it symbolize the disposability of vinyl with the advent of the CD? Will the next exhibit have a floor full of CDs made disposable with the advent of digital music distribution?
One of the last rooms had a conglomeration of stuff (to include the aforementioned New Order project) and in the middle was a pile of these posters about 2' high. Now, Neil Young is one of my favorite artists, but i have a hard time finding this poster inspirational. He's coming through town this fall to tour with his new record (and pump his wife's new record), but tix are a hundred bucks just for the cheap seats. Nothing inspirational about that. We were asked to take one and i took mine back to the hotel. Late that night, i took this time exposure in just the light coming from the window. Is it art or just a naked fat guy flopped on the floor? i left the poster there on the floor of the room when i left. Maybe it inspired the maid. Probably not. No doubt it's in the trash. She didn't get it's deep message. She couldn't read english.
Pity.
If you want to see some cool album cover art and the process behind it, you should get this book which covers the work of the Hipgnosis team in creating some of the greatest album covers of the '70s to include Yes and Pink Floyd.