[TheForge] Just call me Moron

[ries]

On Nov 8, 2007, at 10:59 AM, lee robbins wrote:

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 09:43:45 -0500
From: "Ron Childers" <munlaw2 at hcsmail.com>
Subject: RE: [TheForge] Art, doncha know....
To: "'Sponsored by ABANA'" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Message-ID: <00f801c82215$c42f2220$2201a8c0 at bmlfpc1>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

You are right about the herd- the masses are asses. A
crucifix in a
  toilet
and dung smeared on a photo of the Virgin Mary is not
art and anyone
  who
thinks so is a moron. So what if that sort of lunacy
provokes debate
  and
conversion among pseudo-intellectuals?

The city fathers of a small town in South Georgia
wanted some culture,
  so
they commissioned a "sculptor" who did nothing more
than dump a truck
  load
of big rocks on the court house lawn and hauled ass
with the $$ he was
  paid
in advance. They knew right away they were had and
paid to have them
  taken
to the big red rock eater.

At least they corrected their mistake without any big
hullabaloo. Kinda
  hard
to find morons in small Georgia towns; they must shoot
'em.

Ron C


IT is more than just subjectivity and art has always
been interacting with the reality of the moment. Now
we can do more things so resources are much greater
though there are still the limited number of
practitioners of genius. I'd add Tom Joyce and George
Roussis to the aforementioned large list.

about some of the specifics. did you ever see the piss
Christ?.Piss Christ was his comment on the
worthlessness of religious hypocrisy. Andres Serrano
had a cow head on a series of pink marble slabs at the
WHitney, almost like a crown on a throne.  they
replaced the heads daily since they were
unrefrigerated. At the Brooklyn Museum i saw the Chris
Ofilli with the gilt elephant dung and it had a
similarity to the gilt prerenaissance altar pieces and
byzantine mosaics, not simply shit onm a madonna as
the boob mayor of the time, Giuliani, intrerpreted it.
At the same show there was a series of huge glass
cabinets with slices of a cow that you could walk
between. Having studied anatomy it was interesting but
the nice wooden glass-faced boxes of formaldehyde
grossed people out. Art to shock the public out of
complacency, a recurrent function of art, not just to
paint pretty pictures. As has been said before,
writing about art is like dancing about architecture.
It is all about how it affects you when you are in its
presence. art is always testing limits be it with
color, tonality, materials or content. My complaint is
that of little content writ large. However Robert
Smithson made some superlative piles of rock.


Lee Robbins
Flying tortoise forge studio


Ron C wrote:

You are right about the herd- the masses are asses. A
crucifix in a
  toilet
and dung smeared on a photo of the Virgin Mary is not
art and anyone
  who
thinks so is a moron. So what if that sort of lunacy
provokes debate
  and
conversion among pseudo-intellectuals?

The city fathers of a small town in South Georgia
wanted some culture,
  so
they commissioned a "sculptor" who did nothing more
than dump a truck
  load
of big rocks on the court house lawn and hauled ass
with the $$ he was
  paid
in advance. They knew right away they were had and
paid to have them
  taken
to the big red rock eater.

At least they corrected their mistake without any big
hullabaloo. Kinda
  hard
to find morons in small Georgia towns; they must shoot
'em.

Ron C


Then Lee wrote:

IT is more than just subjectivity and art has always
been interacting with the reality of the moment. Now
we can do more things so resources are much greater
though there are still the limited number of
practitioners of genius. I'd add Tom Joyce and George
Roussis to the aforementioned large list.

about some of the specifics. did you ever see the piss
Christ?.Piss Christ was his comment on the
worthlessness of religious hypocrisy. Andres Serrano
had a cow head on a series of pink marble slabs at the
WHitney, almost like a crown on a throne.  they
replaced the heads daily since they were
unrefrigerated. At the Brooklyn Museum i saw the Chris
Ofilli with the gilt elephant dung and it had a
similarity to the gilt prerenaissance altar pieces and
byzantine mosaics, not simply shit onm a madonna as
the boob mayor of the time, Giuliani, intrerpreted it.
At the same show there was a series of huge glass
cabinets with slices of a cow that you could walk
between. Having studied anatomy it was interesting but
the nice wooden glass-faced boxes of formaldehyde
grossed people out. Art to shock the public out of
complacency, a recurrent function of art, not just to
paint pretty pictures. As has been said before,
writing about art is like dancing about architecture.
It is all about how it affects you when you are in its
presence. art is always testing limits be it with
color, tonality, materials or content. My complaint is
that of little content writ large. However Robert
Smithson made some superlative piles of rock.


Lee Robbins
Flying tortoise forge studio

Me, I am with Lee- in a couple of ways- first, like Lee, I actually  
know the names of both of these "offensive" artists, Chris Offili and  
Andre Serrano, and second, I have seen both of their work in person.

And you know what?

I liked em both.

Call me a Moron, call me a "Psuedo Intellectual"  (isnt the original,  
Spiro Agnew expression "Swado Intellectual"?)



The Offili work, as Lee points out, and I tried to earlier, is not  
dung thrown at a painting of the Virgin Mary- it is carefully wrapped  
elephant turds, the size and shape of loaves of french bread, in gold  
leaf, acting as the base the painting stands on. And worse, the  
Virgin Mary is BLACK!! Well, African, anyway.

And the  Andre Serrano pieces, most famously P-ss Christ, but also  
the S-men and Blood pieces, are just plain beautiful photographs- of  
course, you have to let the work stand on its own to see this, and  
shed all your right wing talk radio artspeak expecations about what  
the little plastic toy man is supposed to represent.

If I had the money, there is no question I would want to own one of  
these photographs, and look at it regularly- not because of its  
reference to Christianity- but because as a simple object, standing  
on its own, I like the way it looks.

Ries






Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/