Osnabrueck

In modern art, there's a fair amount of true genius mixed together with pretentious carpetbaggers who have the right kind of access and resources. I find that for every installation that inspires and informs there's another that's a "nifty idea" that uses grand proportions as a crutch.

I think Roberto, if you, I or anybody else here had the ability to produce a marginally interesting object at a ridiculously large size in conjunction with a very cerebral-sounding motive, we could easily pass off our work as one belonging to an established installation artist.

I admire Anish Kapoor. Good stuff.

I consider Serra more a designer than an artist. Same goes for a good measure of his contemporaries.

SDNR

Yes I agree Osna ...but scale can be very powerful. I think of the sculptures of the Pop artist Claes Oldenberg ...where the banal and ordinary becomes monumental.

Snake Vargas

It would depend what the "grand proportions" were being used for. Is there any reason why it has to be so big? In that safety pin's case, and I don't know what the artist meant by it, obviously it would be useless as a 1:1 scale sculpture.

I guess that might be why he's a "pop artist". It's not very cerebral at all.

SDNR

That is precisely correct Snake ...Pop Art is essentially the celebration of the superficial ...idolising the trivial. A lot of people don't really understand that about the work of Andy Warhol ....it is not the actual work itself that is so important but rather the intention behind it, the "production line" aspect of it ....it is almost completely devoid of expression or meaning. I am always amused when people talk about aesthetics in relation to the work of Warhol ...because that is precisely what his art in not about. In the case of Oldenberg and his "blow ups" of everyday objects ...I guess we must realize that Pop art was a reaction to the intense seriousness of abstract expressionism ...Pop Art is all about being accessible and "cool" ....not terribly intellectual or deep ....but always cool.

Warhol's lithographs were virtually churned out on a production-line like some banal consumer product. They are a celebration of celebrity, or more importantly, the consumption of "celebrity culture" and produced with the same kind of impersonal indifference of the mass consumer products or pulp-Media they idolize, using industrial inks printed on relatively cheap paper.

Osnabrueck

But of course, Wahol's work was original, fresh and provocative in its time.

I think the meaning of pop art has changed since Warhol's time to become something different alltogether.

I love large installations, but I think many of todays megascuptures are large just for the sake of generating attention and nothing more. (Which isn't to say that I don't get a hoot out of Oldenburg or his contemporaries)

SDNR

Well of course you do Osna ....I have yet to meet a graphic designer who doesn't love Pop Art.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the meaning of Pop Art changing. Do you mean like Jeff Koons, with his much more ironic, Post-modern take on popular culture?

NarutoRamen

That is some weird but cool stuff...especially the big chrome thingy and the Big red smokingpipe looking thingy.

Snake Vargas

The line has rather blurred between 'just' graphic design and what used to be pop art. Whereas perhaps his its time Warhol was bucking the art establishment, these days stuff like that is pretty ho-hum, if still sometimes cool regardless.

I could sum it up as "been there, done that".

SDNR

Yes ...but that was all half a century ago now remember ...and even then, one could argue that Marcel Duchamp was creating art objects in the second decade of the twentieth century that were far more revolutionary and anti-establishment.

Marcel Duchamp


When you look at the work of Jeff Koons we can see the culmination of these ideas ...but seen from a late-twentieth century (post-modern) context.

Jeff Koons




Jeff Koons most famous artwork is "Puppy" from 1992. The intention (at least as I interpret it -- koons can be very esoteric with his explanations) was to create an object so monumental, popular, irresistible, and sentimentally seductive ...that it becomes the focal point of a collective experience -- an artwork that is intended to instigate a shared human experience as much as personal one.


I'm glad you find them interesting NarutoRamen ...some contemporary art is weird ...some is offensive, but it can become a part of your life and change the way you see the world around you.

SDNR

The enigmatic and anonymous British graffiti artist known only as "Banksy" is having an exhibition in LA right now called "Barely Legal"....his work is always interesting and thought-provoking. The exhibition is only on for three days.


The elepaht painted to match the wallpaper on the wall in the instalation represents the world's poverty issues that are blatantly in front of us yet we become indifferent to them.

































West Bank, Palestine 2005.