Wednesday 01st June 2016You may remember from a previous post a few weeks ago that we took a look at the latest developments in digital museum tours courtesy of Apple and SFMOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. After a recent hilarious set of events at SFMOMA, they're probably going to be even more happy they they have such an excellent tour system.
Just at the end of May, there was an unremarkable addition to the pieces on display at the museum. The key twist was that this addition was not a new work by a popular modern artist, or even a newly acquired piece - in fact, it wasn't officially sanctioned by the museum at all.
It was just a pair of glasses, left on the floor near an empty wall as though it was a modern installation piece. The most hilarious part is that many museum-goers couldn't tell that it wasn't an official piece, didn't have an artist statement and was actually a simple yet powerful prank being played by a teenager who has yet to start his first year of post-secondary education.
He and his friends visited the museum and enjoyed much of the work, but were less than impressed by some of the pieces that were on display.
“Upon first arrival we were quite impressed with the artwork and paintings presented in the huge facility. However, some of the ‘art’ wasn’t very surprising to some of us. We stumbled upon a stuffed animal on a gray blanket and questioned if this was really impressive to some of the nearby people,” he said.
This is a pretty common theme among casual art viewers, especially regarding the modern style of conceptual art that often balances on a knife edge between profound and pure idiocy.
“I can agree that modern art can be a joke sometimes, but art is a way to express our own creativity. Some may interpret it as a joke, some might find great spiritual meaning in it. At the end of the day, I see it as a pleasure for open-minded people and imaginative minds.”
An admirable sentiment, and with luck, TJ will be attending college for an art-related discipline. Hopefully he'll be able to make a career out of lampooning the pretentiousness of the art world, which could use having its head shrunk occasionally. Duchamp would be proud!
Posted on June 01st 2016 on 07:53pm