Silly airport art

  • (Going through old blog drafts, I found this one that I never posted. So, even though I can’t even remem­ber now what I was doing in the Albu­querque air­port … waste not, want not.)

    Going through the Albu­querque and Los Ange­les air­ports, I was glad to note that artsy types have put in install­ments to heighten my aes­thetic sensibilities.

    Dream statueIn Albu­querque, I was on my way from the food place to the sit­ting around place when I almost bumped into a pedestal. And reach­ing out from the pedestal was a bronze statue of a Native Amer­i­can with a feath­ered head­ress. He was reach­ing out to grab an eagle, who looked dis­tinctly pissed off. I wouldn’t think the eagle would have had many wor­ries. The grab­ber was so far over the edge of the cliff that it seems obvi­ous that the next 20 sec­onds of his life would’ve been the last 20 sec­onds of his life. The statue was called some­thing like “In Pur­suit of Dreams.” I think a bet­ter title would’ve been “Stu­pid Peo­ple Tricks.”

    PostcardsIn Los Ange­les, there was a tem­po­rary install­ment of five artists called “Trav­el­ogue.” The front of each was a typ­i­cal touristy LA post­cards, but the writ­ten por­tion on the back was talk­ing as if the per­son was in some­place much more exotic and unciv­i­lized than LA. One of them talks about bearded pigs and says:

    It is awe­some to expe­ri­ence local flora and fauna … but hor­ri­fy­ing to be reminded how some­times the jug­ger­naut of unnec­es­sary com­merce can reduce nat­ural areas to mere amuse­ment parks and con­sign wildlife to the his­toric unknown.

    So what in the world is the point? That the postcard-writer is on drugs? That LA tourists are pre­tend­ing that they’re in the jun­gle? That peo­ple who write fatu­ous things about jug­ger­nauts on their post­cards are men­tally unsta­ble?
    The plac­ard next to the exhibit wasn’t much help. (Plac­ards next to art exhibits never are.)

    Sam­ple post­cards imply they are from a tourist vis­it­ing Los Ange­les. Con­tra­dict­ing that assump­tion is text on the back that implies they were writ­ten by some­one while vis­it­ing Bahrain, Brasilia or some other dis­tant land. Highly con­cep­tu­al­ized, the artist’s work exploits curios­ity and intel­lect through vir­tual travel, hav­ing the effect of ques­tion­ing and expos­ing cul­tural tourism.

    Exploits curios­ity? Exposes cul­tural tourism? It’s not just that those words are fatu­ous and irrel­e­vant, it’s that they’re seri­ously mis­judg­ing how life-changing an expe­ri­ence it is to see over-sized incon­gru­ous post­cards. This is the kind of crap that artists get away with. It’s as if they said, “Look­ing at this exhibit, the fully actu­al­ized human should be feel­ing sen­sa­tions of faint-headedness as his immor­tal soul stretches by two hat sizes. There may be some nau­sea as the writ­ing on the Really Big Post­cards from Some­one who Thinks They’re Some­where Else causes you to reassess every­thing you thought you ever knew. Unusu­ally intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als may find that they have an imme­di­ate need to go out and do some art them­selves. Really clever peo­ple may start reach­ing for eagles.”

    Well, you risk being called a Philis­tine if you talk like that. I’m not say­ing that some­one might not get some­thing out of both the statue and the post­cards. I just think that pub­lic art would be served a lit­tle bet­ter if artists spent a lit­tle less time in the com­pany of other artists (or peo­ple who want to pre­tend like they might be artists) and a lit­tle more time around tired air­port pas­sen­gers. Art can be — and should be, IMHO — refresh­ing, ele­vat­ing, beau­ti­ful, inter­est­ing. Artists like those cur­rently get­ting funded to pro­vide pub­lic art seem to be happy when they’ve made some­thing that’s dif­fi­cult and hap­pier still when they’ve made some­thing incomprehensible.


    Related posts:

    1. Adver­tis­ing and the state of Art — epi­logue: Art
    2. Adver­tis­ing and the state of Art — part I
    3. One Mus­lim woman’s criticism
    4. Adver­tis­ing and the state of Art — epi­logue: pomo
    5. Oh cool!!

    March 6th, 2007 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Audrey 03.06.2007

    I am with you. The art in our cul­ture, as always, reflects the preva­lent phi­los­o­phy that there is no ulti­mate real­ity and no ulti­mate exam­ple of truth and beauty. There­fore, some con­tem­po­rary art reflects pop­u­lar notions that chaos, non­sense, etc. is beau­ti­ful; any­thing that can pop into someone’s mind is “beautiful”.

  • Grace

    This is the prob­lem. When Art started to be wor­shipped for its own sake, it stopped being able to be a way to express the real beauty that all of us see in cre­ation. That’s the point at which mod­ern artists began to really love it, but it’s also the point where most peo­ple stopped being able to find any rea­son to care.

  • Michelle

    I loved your post! It is very true. I don’t under­stand half of the art that is out there, and of the art I under­stand, most is impres­sion­is­tic, so the ques­tion is: do I really under­stand that either? I would like to believe that I do! :)

  • Grace

    I could go on an all-day rant about the ridicu­lous things that hap­pened when art became ele­vated so far past its rea­son­able place. I love art, but it’s only art. If you are look­ing at Impres­sion­ist art, and you’re think­ing it’s beau­ti­ful and some­thing that bright­ens your day — you get it. On the other hand, if you’ve seen stuff that looks like junk and think­ing that it’s unap­peal­ing and looks like a waste of time — you get it as well. Tak­ing classes in art appre­ci­a­tion might give you some addi­tional infor­ma­tion, but peo­ple shouldn’t feel like they need a PhD before they’re allowed to have an opin­ion about a paint­ing or sculpture.

    It’s the artist’s job to artic­u­late what he or she wants to con­vey. Unfor­tu­nately, when tal­ent and inspi­ra­tion couldn’t keep up with the public’s demand, (and for a lot of other rea­sons) artists started to hide behind vis­ceral imagery, preachy social com­men­tary and incom­pre­hen­si­ble mes­sages, and the great mes­sage going out to the pub­lic was that they were just too plebian and soul­less to under­stand. Feh! It’s a great scam, but it has cost artists dearly. Art is now rel­e­gated to a snob class with most peo­ple not giv­ing a rip about it. Too bad.

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