Today's winner is, not the cleaner responsible for the headline, but the dumbass (or dumbasses) responsible for buying the damn thing in the first place! The Telegraph reports:
A determined German cleaner destroyed a piece of art valued at £690,000 [more than US $1.1 million] by cleaning away what she thought was an unsightly stain from the artwork.
The cleaner got to work on an installation by the late and famed artist Martin Kippenberger at a museum in Dortmund.
Entitled “When It Starts Dripping From The Ceilings” the piece comprised a tower of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom painted brown to give the impression of discolouration caused by water. The cleaner took the paint to be an actual stain and scrubbed the bowl till it looked new.
“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” a museum spokeswoman said, adding that it appeared the cleaner was unaware of museum rules prohibiting cleaning staff getting with 20 centimetres of pieces or art.
Kippenberger was regarded as one of the finest artists of his generation until his death in 1997 aged just 44. His work now commands a high value and earlier this year one sculpture was sold at Christie’s in London for £1,329,250 [more than US $2.1 million].
There's more at the link.
In the first place, I'd never even begin to classify that concoction of scrap lumber, nails and a basin as 'art'. In the second place, even if I did, I'd be damned if I'd value it at even one-thousandth of the price paid for it by the museum! To claim that pile of steaming ordure is worth over $1.1 million . . . verily, the mind doth boggle!
I think I must set to work duplicating some of the late Mr. Kippenberger's 'art'. If that's an example of the 'complexity' of his work, I think I can knock out a copy every day - or simply sub-contract the work to a few local five-year-olds playing with their fathers' tool chests!
Peter
Generally, museum employees are carefully and strictly instructed on how to handle, treat or clean works of art. Could this have been a publicity stunt to draw attention to the museum and artist?
ReplyDeleteThere is no more clear statement of what's wrong with "art" and modern intellectuals than, Kippenberger was regarded as one of the finest artists of his generation. Any child could have done that.
ReplyDeleteThere's a saying in the world of Math that it's discouraging to work for a decade on a problem and then find that Gauss knew it in his crib. The problem with modern art is that almost everything that can be said about the human condition has been said already. They need to find new, honest work. Really new and worthwhile observations on the human condition are exceedingly rare.
The piece falls into the category of Installation Art, and as such, is entitled to be and appear anything the artist desires. You would be surprised what is passed off as art in university art departments. I'm still smiling as I remember walking to one of my classes and realizing that something I was going to pick and put in the trash, was part of a semester project.
ReplyDeleteBeing a Freshman at 65 was a tremendous experience, including my "art education." I loved it. :)
There are any number of these art objects on display in university Art Galleries.
Art is such a subjective subject that it's hard to say "My kid could do that" and have it actually mean something. What I consider art may be what you consider garbage, and vice-versa. While I certainly would not pay a couple of million for it, I guess someone would. More power to the artist (or more likely to his agent at this point).
ReplyDeleteYou can hardly get worse than the crap Piero Manzoni passed off as "art".
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