Annoying Art, Or Not? (new images added)

on looking again at that image I realise it is floating on water and the trees behind are reflections - that is just what I love about his work - the playing with perception.

Vivien, I like that: "playing with perception." That will be my standard excuse when I do things like screwing up the perspective in a drawing.

mmm 'tis indeed a useful phrase!



- as is 'interesting' when you can't think what on earth to say without mortally offending someone!

the scary thing about saying something is "interesting" is like saying something is "nice"... and meaning it and sounding like a prat.

I do it all the time, honestly!

me too


the worst is trying to find something to say when seeing an exhibition of excrutiatingly bad work and the artist stands there waiting smugly to be praised - full of his own importance and sure of his talent

.... help! I resorted to 'mmm.... how many years have you been painting?' (the work was awful, the colours terrible, the compositions non-existent, the drawing skills absent - nothing to praise - and I can't say something is great when it isn't, especially to someone so full of himself!)


...50 years he said smugly - I just smiled and tried not to catch the friends eyes


outside my friend said 'one year's experience - 50 times over' which summed it up brilliantly

good explaination...
I just thought of someone's work that gets to me, Damien Hurst (of formaldahyde cow fame) it is just gruesome. There was also the person in Britain, that was given the grant to kick a can in the street. Ummmm... art!

sadly we have a few idiots who build these people up

I watched a programme on Damien Hurst some time ago, thinking I ought to see if there was anything in his work, there wasn't. He had a little gaggle of girlie groupies in tow as he cut a cow in half - and when it was found to have been pregnant were simpering 'oh a dear little baby' - how gruesome can it get?

I missed the kicking of the can! so much conceptual art is just so boring - you look, you get the shallow idea they are expressing - and then what? it isn't sustaining and has nothing else to offer.

exactly, it is all very pompous... depending.
I like Luis Camnitzer's work, but he is an older artist, well respected. He does only conceptual pieces. They tend to be political.

ohhh, how hideous! (about the cow)
He doesn't stop at cows though, I have seen photos of his friends or whomever they were making faces next to decapitated heads in a wetlab. Just so tasteless.

Given a grant to kick a can in the street?
Ha ha ha...surely the art is in GETTING the grant.
This appeals to me.

It is definately a heap of art-bullshit (as I called art essay writing at school) gets you the grant.
Think of the most out there, ludicrous thing and you would probably get it.

Get from Brett Whiteley to fornicating frogs in six steps...

I'll have to look up Luis Kamnitzer - I've never heard of him.

What do you think about this?




At first I didn't like te idea of painting on trees -- but it grew on me, especially the story behind it. One of the two owners of the forest hated the art so much that he started to cut all the trees down. The government stepped in to purchase what was left of the forest and during their survey found a prehistoric Celtic site.

I find the art annoying, even if the paint is unharmful to the trees, and the owner more annoying.

I agree.

You found which owner more annoying? The one who cut down the trees, the owner who left them standing, or the government who purchased it and considered it art? I used to be a purist, but it's grown on me. I like the way it brings light into the forest.

I've also grown fond of the Chinese poems carved into rock above the Yangtze River.



And, of course, I'm very fond of the (10,000 years old) "She Who Watches"

The one who cut down the trees.

On the art, I like the forest as itself, by itself, for the most part. I recently let room for AGoldworty to fritter about with leaves.
Not much more, for me.

what type of idiot figures that "cutting" the trees down is a good idea???
I like the poetry and structures that blend with the natural landscape, after all "we" were doing that for thousands of years before people started "to own" specific parts of the world.

I have never really liked all of Christo's work though. I appreciate the thought and everything, but it seems to be more of an inconvieniece than art? It is purposefully obscuring something. I guess that's ok - we can't have everything spelled out for us.

oh thought about something else.
Forget the name of the artist...

I walked into the MCA in Sydney a long time ago (when you had to pay) to be confronted with a smell coming from a room. The smell was slightly repulsive, as it was weak, but familiar.

Inside the room was glass cases with pillows in them with used sanitary products and the woman's story beside it. I was so horrified to see dried out used tampons etc I didn't read many of the stories.
Would that repulse anyone else? Sure, it was a famanist statement, but it hindsight it is like the guy who gets the grant kicking the can in the street...