Observations on Art 5.30

Late year the Museum of Modern Art caused a major art controversy when they added the first 14 video games to their collections. The controversy involves whether video games should be considered art at all. I've said before that if Damien Hirst's spots can be considered among the greatest art ever video games can be considered art too. But that's just my humble opinion. The late Roger Ebert once said "video games can never be art" but again that was just one man's opinion. You can form you own opinion but I needed a little background as an introduction to this TED video of Paola Antonelli.

Antonelli is the senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA and has been at the museum since 1994. Though not on their latest list Art Review once rated her as one of the hundred most powerful people in art. In the video she explains why adding the video games was important and also separates design from art.

link

Now something a bit more personal coming out of the same talk. At one point Antonelli says this; "EVE Online is an artificial universe, if you wish, but one of the diplomats that was killed in Benghazi, not Ambassador Stevens, but one of his collaborators, was a really big shot in EVE Online, so here you have a diplomat in the real world that spends his time in EVE Online to kind of test, maybe, all of his ideas about diplomacy and about universe-building, and to the point that the first announcement of the bombing was actually given on EVE Online, and after his death, several parts of the universe were named after him."

The diplomat Antonelli mentions was Sean Smith and while chatting on EVE the night of the Benghazi attack he sent this eerie message, "assuming we don't die tonight." My brother plays EVE and had actually chatted with Smith a few times. He tells me that thousands of in-world stations have been renamed in honor of Smith or the 'Vile Rat' as he was known.

Small world.

6/1 update - Here is a good clip tho go with the first part of this post. Paola Antonelli appearing on The Colbert Report back in February and explained applied design to Colbert. The best quote in the clip is from Colbert himself who asks Antonelli "what are we now? Are we modern, post-modern, or are we pre-future?"

Observations on Art 3.11

Even with all the art in town this week, all the shows and fairs, people still seem enthralled with the few Damien Hirst pieces at the Armory Show. The man is everywhere these days. Three hundred of Hirst's, and his 100 plus assistants', spot paintings are currently being shown in now extended shows at 11 Gagosian Galleries around the world. This summer also brings another Hirst exhibition at the Tate Modern in London and 2014 will bring us Hirst's own gallery also in London. Talk about overexposed, somewhere Andy Warhol is jealous as hell.

For some reason I have always had a problem with installation art. Maybe my background, education, I'm not sure why. On the other hand an artist's art is their own, hopefully showing what they feel inside. In 2007, as the worl'd economy began its long crash, Hirst created a $100 million diamond encrusted skull and called it For The Love Of God. If this is what he was feeling inside, well, for the love of god indeed. 

British painter David Hockney has said when discussing Hirst and his assistants, “It’s a little insulting to craftsmen, skilful craftsmen. I used to point out at art school, you can teach the craft, it’s the poetry you can’t teach. Now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”

I suppose if I got myself a paintball gun, stood back fifty feet, and fired randomly at the side of an old Pennsylvania barn I could call it art and than I would understand.

No, even than I don't think I would get it at all.

I honestly do have some thoughts to share on Art Week and some of what I have seen. Something awesome to see was the large number of women artists represented this year, even beyond the Salon doors.

For what it's worth I saw this quote yesterday that is a good addition to my last post on Occupy Museums. Video artist Yvonne Guzman said that there’s a feeling among younger artists that “the mega-rich collectors and artists are all hanging out together on a different universe somewhere. But the vast majority of artists aren’t a part of that, we’re just getting on with our art.”