Monday, September 15, 2008

State of the art? (or Psssst: Christ, the emperor has no clothes!)

Andres Serrano currently has a show in NY featuring large scale photographs of various animal turds. As Serrano knows better than anyone, it's really incredible the variety of shit that one finds out there.

The current Serrano show at Yvon Lambert

Of course if I was going to buy a piece of excrement, I'd prefer to invest in the original idea by Piero Manzoni. Almost half a century ago, Manzoni crapped in a can and people bought it.

Merda d'Artiste, 1961, by Piero Manzoni

At least that piece is small enough to be hidden on a shelf or in a safe deposit box. The Serrano piece begs to be displayed, perhaps in the den? So what happens when the collector visits that room a few years from now and has the sudden flash of insight that the spectacular and expensive photograph on the wall is actually a giant load of crap?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

blake you're missing it entirely--these larger than life images show the beauty of something so common, yet so often overlooked, especially in the art world. His gift is being able to see the uniqueness of every turd, and his large-scale presentation in effect brings these misunderstood creatures to a god-like status.

very eye catching! But I think a scratch-n-sniff would have been a bigger hit!