the never boring world of art

1) The Australian performer Stelios Arcadiou has had a third ear grafted to his arm. It’s supposed to be art. The ear isn’t functional, though he is hoping to eventually install a microphone in it so that audiences will be able to hear what his extra ear picks up. See here for a rather grotesque photo.

2) If you’re a philistine rube like me, you might again have doubts about what gets passed as art these days. But, of course, I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this art. After all, as Mia Fineman points out:

For those who believe that painting must be about something more than just color and gesture—like craft or technical skill or mimetic representation—abstract paintings by children and animals provide the ultimate refutation, proof that modern art is indeed a hoax. But such skeptics profoundly miss the point of the art they’re trying to debunk. Yes, anyone can pick up a brush and slather paint on canvas in a drippy style that evokes Jackson Pollock. But it took an artist like Pollock to step back from his own work, which at the time looked unlike anything that had come before, and say, with bold conviction: “This is it. This is what modern painting looks like.”

I get it now. What I’m supposed to admire is the conviction. You know, the conviction to declare that what you’ve made is something that it obviously is not. Oops, there I go again. Never mind me — I’m just a farmboy from Nova Scotia. I’m sure that if I had been born in one of those sophisticated, cosmopolitan places like London or New York City I too would be able to appreciate ears on arms, decomposing rabbits strung up in front of the museum doors (they would make good fertilizer), and so on.

3) But I can’t resist pointing out what the next advance in art clearly should be. Think cross-fertilization between Arcadiou and Mapplethorpe.

Sydney