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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2614 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 28, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Modern art ist so great that even museums don't manage to hang it up correctly. And we cannot do anything about it, because it might damage the picture.

Surely the solution could just be some sort of camera-obscura thing where you see a capture of it flipped right-side-up?

Okay, I'm just going to say it:

SURELY they could just make a new one that is identical to the original in all important respects. Just use period-correct tape, I guess.

Unless the 'message' and 'meaning' of the work are tied up in the knowledge that it was a particular artist who made it, or the exact materials that were used, then making a new one in the exact same configuration should be precisely as meaningful to the viewer as the original.

Although the fact that it is now known as "that work of art that was hung upside down and now can't be hung correctly" probably adds to its mystique, which might be the point.

Unless the 'message' and 'meaning' of the work are tied up in the knowledge that it was a particular artist who made it, or the exact materials that were used, then making a new one in the exact same configuration should be precisely as meaningful to the viewer as the original.

You... don't accept the premise of "the original" in the first place, do you?

The original is the one the artist made with his own hands.

But either the original has some special meaning to it that a reproduction wouldn't, or they can make a copy and it will be just as meaningful.

I'm questioning that "the original" is of any special value in this instance.

The special meaning of the original is that it's the original. Being made by the artist's own hands is the point. This isn't a new development in art.

But in this case, there's really nothing about the original that can only be captured by that particular artist's unique talents.

It's colored tape, arranged in a particular layout.

The process the artist used is EASILY reproducible.

Why would people's feelings about the work change whether the original artist's hands were involved or not?

The ship of Theseus is an age old philosophical argument. Convincing reproductions that pass professional scrutiny get treated like the original until the deception has been discovered, but nobody who saw the forgery instead of the original feels different from how they'd have felt seeing the original. If it protects the work and gives the audience the chance to see the work as it was meant to be seen, what is the issue? I think what it comes down to is do you want to actually see a Mondrian, or is it more important to you to tell people you have seen a Mondrian?

The ship of THeseus is a far cry from just building another ship and calling it the ship of Theseus.

And I would say recreating that Mondrian is a far cry new dawn from making another piece of art and calling it that Mondrian.

I've lost you here.

It would be acceptable, in case the artwork was damaged, to reglue the strips in place. It's called restoration. Making another one wouldn't be the original, it's what they call a "reproduction" and you can't hang that up in a museum as an original.

More comments

Bummer. The ‘correct’ orientation seems noticeably more appealing to me, the vibe from looking up and left rather than down is better somehow.

The way the picture is currently hung shows the multicoloured lines thickening at the bottom, suggesting an extremely simplified version of a skyline. However, when curator Susanne Meyer-Büser started researching the museum’s new show on the Dutch avant garde artist earlier this year, she realised the picture should be the other way around.

“The thickening of the grid should be at the top, like a dark sky,” said Meyer-Büser. “Once I pointed it out to the other curators, we realised it was very obvious. I am 100% certain the picture is the wrong way around.”

This just reads like a priest conferring with other priests, trying to regain the confidence of their flock, when a prophecy turned out wrong, and they decided a new interpretation is the "correct" one.

A photograph of Mondrian’s studio, taken a few days after the artist’s death and published in American lifestyle magazine Town and Country in June 1944, also shows the same picture sitting on an easel the other way up.

Seems plausible that it really is upside down.

I'm not commenting on the plausibility of the new explanation. I'm commenting on how they switched from "Obviously the thickening lines represent X" to "Obviously the thickening lines represent Y" without missing a beat. And I'm sure if a 3rd photograph emerged with the work on it's 3rd side, they'd come up with another explanation about how "Obviously the thickening lines represent Z". As opposed to maybe the "artist" just preferred running his tape in a consistent direction at a low angle where he doesn't have to reach while he was working on it.

Because it's all a barely recognizable mess that could mean anything. It doesn't "obviously" represent any specific thing. And it cracks me up that they act like it does. They might as well be commenting on the obviously correct interpretations of a schizophrenics scat smeared wall art.

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