2008 Woodie Awards
Art Shmart
Nikki Sansone
Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: Arts & Features
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What would you do if you knew you could get away with it? Would you commit random acts of violence? Would you be slutty (or sluttier, as the case might be)? Would you flip off a small child?
Would you call it art?
Art has long been the scapegoat for many pestilent pranks and subversive pranksters. In 1937, Picasso was able to couch his critique of General Franco and the Spanish Nationalist Party through the comically grim Guernica. Andres Serrano posited his own feelings on what modern society has done to the iconography of Christ in his photograph of a crucifix in a vat of his own urine.
Last spring, even Colgate was witness to its own art controversy. Piles of snow were shoveled into the Little Hall stairwell and called art, heating debates amongst the Who's Who of art at Colgate as to what really does constitute good and bad art.
Perhaps the most jarring of these pieces are those that fall into that uncomfortable category of the, well, just plain "uncomfortable." Everyone remembers where they were when the towers fell on September 11, but less commonly remembered is where you were when Tumbling Woman was first displayed.
The sculpture, by Eric Fischl, was commissioned to serve as a remembrance for all those who had been in the Towers. However, Tumbling Woman was on display for just about a week before it was covered with a cloth and surrounded by a curtain.
The twisted, flailing, naked body of Fischl's Tumbling Woman seemed for some to bear too much of a resemblance to images of victims falling from the two Twin Towers.
Artists have the unique liberty and privilege of belonging to their own little world -- a world that is often thought of as separate from society; a world thought to be a little too weird for the rest of us; a world we think of as a nice place to visit, but we'd never want to live there.
Ask Carolee Shneeman why she read a story off a scroll she pulled out from inside her vagina. Ask Chris Burden why he had someone kick him down a flight of stairs and then call it "Kunst Kick" or, in German, "Art Kick?" They do these things for the same reason they bleed red -- they are just artists, making art.
Would you call it art?
Art has long been the scapegoat for many pestilent pranks and subversive pranksters. In 1937, Picasso was able to couch his critique of General Franco and the Spanish Nationalist Party through the comically grim Guernica. Andres Serrano posited his own feelings on what modern society has done to the iconography of Christ in his photograph of a crucifix in a vat of his own urine.
Last spring, even Colgate was witness to its own art controversy. Piles of snow were shoveled into the Little Hall stairwell and called art, heating debates amongst the Who's Who of art at Colgate as to what really does constitute good and bad art.
Perhaps the most jarring of these pieces are those that fall into that uncomfortable category of the, well, just plain "uncomfortable." Everyone remembers where they were when the towers fell on September 11, but less commonly remembered is where you were when Tumbling Woman was first displayed.
The sculpture, by Eric Fischl, was commissioned to serve as a remembrance for all those who had been in the Towers. However, Tumbling Woman was on display for just about a week before it was covered with a cloth and surrounded by a curtain.
The twisted, flailing, naked body of Fischl's Tumbling Woman seemed for some to bear too much of a resemblance to images of victims falling from the two Twin Towers.
Artists have the unique liberty and privilege of belonging to their own little world -- a world that is often thought of as separate from society; a world thought to be a little too weird for the rest of us; a world we think of as a nice place to visit, but we'd never want to live there.
Ask Carolee Shneeman why she read a story off a scroll she pulled out from inside her vagina. Ask Chris Burden why he had someone kick him down a flight of stairs and then call it "Kunst Kick" or, in German, "Art Kick?" They do these things for the same reason they bleed red -- they are just artists, making art.
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