Art or Tasteless Horror??

MG42 · Post by **MG42** » Thu May 27, 2004 1:59 am

Hi All,
It's the first time I've posted in here but just wanted to get some thoughts on the following -

The recent fire at the Saatchi warehouse brought to my attention a piece that was seemingly destroyed in the fire entitled Hell.

This controversial £1000,000 commission by the Chapman brothers shows a diorama filled with 5000 Germans, skeletons and mutilated corpses scattered around a concentration camp and surrounding landscape. There's even a McDonalds in the diorama. Pictures can be found here:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~lpbrull/digipage/ ... erview.htm

I'm in two minds over the piece. I admire the quality of the diorama build (although with a £1m and two years you can make anything look good) but am somewhat disturbed by visual horror of it all. Granted that was no doubt the intention of the artists but have they gone too far with the grotesque Barkeresque "Hellraiser" imagry??

Joking aside with the obvious link between hell and fire, was the destruction of this piece of "art" a loss to society or a fitting end for a piece of trash??
Regards
MG

Patrick · Post by **Patrick** » Thu May 27, 2004 4:12 am

Sounds like one of those ageless questions without an answer. I took an Art Appreciation in college many, many years ago and the first question that our instructor asked us is "What is art?" Some people thought that an artistic piece had to be a 100% faithful representation of some real life object and didn't "get" abstract art. Others thought that abstracts like Picasso's "Guernica" could be a force for social change. One joker said it was art if you were willing to purchase it and display it in your home. All kinds of opinions, but no consensus.

I figure its in the eye of the beholder. If it appeals to you, fine. If it shocks you and makes you think hard about something, that's OK too. But just because I might find something in poor taste doesn't mean some other person might not see some value in it. Of course, there's also art that is probably self-indulgent crap, no matter who sees it.

I looked at the website - like the original poster, I found the diorama to be well executed in a technical sense, but found the subject matter to be disturbing. If the artist meant to convey the "horrors of war", then I think he succeeded.

derGespenst · Post by **derGespenst** » Thu May 27, 2004 10:30 am

I'm inclined to agree with Patrick. I looked at the website as well. It's clearly one man's interpretation of - something. I don't think it's any more disturbing, actually considerably less so, than most evening news programs. If the intent was to make us recoil from the horrors of war, well, I think he's preaching to the choir. Those who hate war the most are the ones who know it best.

gavmeister13 · Post by **gavmeister13** » Thu May 27, 2004 12:52 pm

i'm going to be very old fashioned and say art is a painting, drawing etc that looks like something. e.g. a painting of some hills looks like some hills, a drawing of a river looks like a river. fair enough is something modern is made that is spectacular i will accept how some poeople will call that art but a shark or a cow in a box or a sculpture of your head filled with your blood is just rubbish. i especially hate the way people put the SS etc into art in a cheap attempt to make it controversial. i went to the Tate Modern and saw a piece of "art" that a German soldier aiming his rifle. he had the SS runes on his helmet but very badly done...it looked like an afterthought in an attempt to make it controversial...all rubbish

end rant

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Fri May 28, 2004 8:35 am

Hi MG42,

Speaking personally, I feel absolutely no sense of loss at the fiery end of such a high proportion of "BritArt".

The "art" of "BritArt" was really self-promotion. That is what most of these artists were really good at. Their artisanal skills are generally mediocre, so they had to buy tents or sheds from shops or plunder nature for sharks and calves to pickle.

Nope. I have abolutely no sense of loss, only relief that the Fates are such discerning art critics.

Cheers,

Sid.

Freiritter · Post by **Freiritter** » Fri May 28, 2004 4:10 pm

Here's my two cents: One man's meat is another man's poison.

Cordially,

Freiritter

k-pp · Post by **k-pp** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:14 pm

I never thought I'd be defending the YBAs, but here goes.

Cutting a cow up and putting it into a transparent tank is provoking a different question to someone painting a cow in a field. The two should not be confused.
Both, however, deal in illusions! Everything called art is not real and involves ideas and imagination, but mostly obsession. What does it matter if you're not using pigment and oil, and who cares if, say, it's a bought tent? Emin needed a tent as a vehicle for her art, but the tent's not really that important. You can call her a self-indulgent and crass woman, but she's articulating something deeply personal about her life through art. All the other stuff - the hut, the bed, etc. - reinforces that obsession.
I have very mixed feelings about what the Chapman brothers are up to, but at least it's thought provoking (mostly about things it's not actually portraying). It's definitely art.

Also, I think this art was less about self-promotion than being elevated by canny and media savvy collectors (Saatchi etc). As a consequence, their art is no less valid than traditional representational (or figurative) art; it's just that it has more media coverage.

Karl

B Hellqvist · Post by **B Hellqvist** » Sun May 30, 2004 3:36 am

Maybe they should put the ashes and remains of the burnt art on display, and see if the critics will hail it as "innovative"?

MG42 · Post by **MG42** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:53 am

Thanks for all your responses. Very much a "mixed bag" of opinions.

MG

medic · Post by **medic** » Tue Jun 08, 2004 11:55 am

Art is a very subjective thing. On one hand, I think it depends on the artist's intention he or she had for the piece - what's it supposed to convey? Does it have a message?

Of course, if this were a painting rather than a diorama, would it be along the lines of Picasso's Guernica? Would it be better received by people in general?

You see what I'm getting at. ... Of course, this is the day and age in which we have Auschwitz, the comic book - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 4:30 am

Hi Medic,

Picasso's Guernica is another work I have my doubts about. Firstly the Guernica raid was not the out and out atrocity on civilians that Republican propaganda depicted as it had clear tactical aims and secondly Picasso had already sketched many of the details of the finished painting before the raid. The work always seems to me as the classic example of an artist making his work conform to the propaganda of his favoured ideology without regard (or knowledge) of the full circumstances.

Cheers,

Sid.

medic · Post by **medic** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 7:35 am

Sid,

And those are good points, but I think they're kind of irrelevant to the discussion. Don't you agree?

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:49 am

Hi Medic,

Yes, unless one considers Guernica "tasteless horror".

Cheers,

Sid.

medic · Post by **medic** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:10 am

I was referring to Guernica for the fact that it's well known and generally hailed as a masterpiece. It's not everyone's bag of nuts (I'm not exactly fond of Picasso's work in general), but it's one of the better known works of art.

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 9:24 am

Hi Medic,

One has to wonder whether Picasso's "Guernica" would still have been regarded as so great a work if he had called it "Barcelona" after the much more important but far less well-known Italian raid on that city. I think the painting has benefitted enormously from riding on the back of the international furore over the Guernica bombing, something that was much less pronounced over the first Barcelona bombing.

Cubism seems inherently silly. Why try to capture multiple views of a subject on a two dimensional canvas? Why not do it in three dimensions in the first place. It is called sculpture.

Cheers,

Sid.