I don’t get it
by fledgling otakuI may have waxed rhapsodic about modern architecture in my previous post, but when it comes to modern art, I confess that my aesthetic sense is too grounded in… what do I call it? ah yes. Reality.
Here’s the perfect example: 500 art experts voted on what piece of art was the most influential in the past hundred years, and they picked Duchamp’s urinal. That was a simple commercial urinal, which the artist signed and put on display:
I don’t get it.
Maybe the art experts were being ironic; maybe they were being satirical; maybe they were saying that the urinal represented some kind of ultimate banality of art, a deconstruction of what art means, and in so doing became some kind of profound commentary on the nature of art itself.
Maybe. I dunno. I don’t get it.
But if a urinal can win the top prize for most influential piece of art in the past century, then I humbly suggest No Knife as honorable mention.
July 14th, 2007 at 2:52 am
I have a suspicion that the key word here is “influential”.
Not “good”. Not “inspirational”. Not “extraordinary”. Not “meaningful”.
I bet it actually was quite influential. But not any of those other things.