laughing head

[Arrow]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/5081744.stm

"The Academy said the judging panel assumed the two pieces were separate and decided the support was better."

:rolleyes:

[fused]

"It is accepted that works may not be displayed in the way that the artist might have intended."

How is that acceptable? What a load of BS.

[sculptor]

...The Academy said ...

hmmm
All in one harmonious voice?,
or,
in a cacophonous crescendo that to any reasonable outsider would have sounded like the braying of jackasses?

[Merlion]

My comments below were posted in another thread and got 'buried'. I think I'll transfer them here.

Below are excerpts from a news article from the UK Telegraph. The full article is given here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/15/nra15.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/15/ixuknews.html). It has photos of the nearly empty plinth and the laughing head.

Artist laughs his head off at the RA

David Hensel could not help but chuckle when he went to see his sculpture on display at the Royal Academy.

At first, after wandering through the Summer Exhibition, he concluded that it was nowhere to be seen. But eventually he found it. Or rather, he didn't.

What he did find was the sculpture's empty plinth and wooden base displayed as "Exhibit 1201".

Mr Hensel had never considered the empty plinth a work of art in itself. But the exhibition selectors evidently did. So, too, did visitors, who pronounced it beautiful.

No one seemed to notice, or mind, that the sculpture itself, a laughing head entitled One Day Closer to Paradise, was missing. [snip]

The plinth, cut from a slate mortuary slab, took less than four hours to make, the tiny wooden base for the sculpture, fashioned from boxwood, less than an hour.

But One Day Closer to Paradise, made from jesmonite, took rather longer - two months in fact. No one was less surprised than Mr Hensel that a rather odd-looking, bone-shaped bit of wood should be accepted for the world's largest open-submission contemporary art exhibition. [snip]

Here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/06/15/dl1503.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/15/ixuknews.html) is a related article When art's all in the head, also from the Telegraph, commenting on the broader issue of contemporary art.

[philpraxis]

Here, I don't know if it's the same situation here but very often, in exhibition, the curator or the exhibition organizer are more and more taking a position as artist in itself where he "composes" his piece by arranging the others' artist work together.

There's a point where it's just not acceptable, when the organizer "twists" the meaning of the original artist work by doing this.

There was an interesting talk about this problem just a few days ago with Daniel Buren, french artist, in a Fine Arts university here in france. Quite interesting to see that this problem is touching sculpture, even non-hyped regular sculpture (in comparison to Hirst / Koons / ...)

[Blacksun]

That is too damn funny! I'm not real surprised though...anytime "academics" get involved logic and asthetics fly right out the window.

[Merlion]

..anytime "academics" get involved logic and asthetics fly right out the window.

About this Royal Academy of Arts in London, I'm sure our UK members here would know more than me. It is really a society of artists (perhaps relatively exclusive), and much less a teaching academy.

I have been to their annual Summer Shows twice. The displayed items were mainly paintings and 2D works, with not too many sculptures and 3D works, perhaps less than 10%.

Who knows, perhaps it means their don't pay too much attention to their assessments of sculpture submissions.

[Merlion]

This 'funny' incident raises many issues. To me, one of the serious ones concerns the intention of the artist being changed by the gallery, and correction or withdrawal not made when the mistake was discovered. The plinth is a support for the artwork, and is knowingly displayed on a public show without the main artwork, under the name of the artist.

The comments below support or illustrate my point. The excerpt is taken from a longer thoughtful commentary article from the Hartford Courant (http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-modrnart.artjun17,0,1205415.story?coll=hc-headlines-life).

But Barry Rosenberg, director of the Contemporary Art Galleries at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, said he would not display parts of an artwork if that was not the artist's intent.

"Once that mistake was made, I could not keep that in the gallery," Rosenberg said. "You need to respect the idea behind the art."

"There's nothing worse than for an artist's work to be disrespectfully presented," said Jennifer Gross, Seymour H. Knox Jr. curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery.

The Royal Academy's official stance: "It is accepted that works may not be displayed in the way that the artist might have intended."

Although apparently the artist David Hensel did not raise any objection, the Royal Academy remains unapologetic, and instead takes the above unacceptable stance.

Well, I would not be surprised if private debates are already happening within its ranks of the RA membership as this event seems to affect the reputation of this old British institution.

[MountainSong]

Pardon the Bump.
It seemed another view point might round out the discussion and give us something to ponder as we go about the business of being artist and expressing our thoughts and lives in a visual medium, which, if we're good enough, will be judged by a jury of our peers just as this artist was.

Imagine that you are a judge for the upcoming show. No doubt you are or were an actual artist or at the very least well studied in the arts. You have seen literally thousands upon thousand s of art pieces, representing many generations of artistic accomplishment through the eons of man.
There is little which can be done which surprises you anymore, but you do recognize that which is different, unique and new. You know that the art viewing public is in nearly the same boat. It is your job to bring new thought provoking work into the exhibit.

You see this beautifully rendered stone face before you, it is rendered with a modern twist, but it is still the same old Shakespearean mask of comedy, nicely handled but still a reiteration of a known work adding no new visual knowledge of it’s own.
Then you see the base and pilth, see them as a separate sculpture, the base with beautiful patina in it’s own right, speaking of timelessness and across cultures, a void of space yet packed with human visual experience, then the pilth, setting steady or perhaps swimming in that void.
You see many story lines unfold, mankind in the space of the void holding his own, yet subject to the merest bump – strength and fragility…..
the individual (pilth) exiting as a singular persona worthy of notice and love against the background of the white noise of humanity……
An unique and relative thought swimming in the mind of a person inundated with information in the information society....
the artist daring to speak beyond the well explored visuals of a generation long dead.
Etc, etc….

The base and pilth tell many stories, look at it again, each as unique as the individual viewing it. The well rendered head had but one story …..a story all ready told.
The base and pilth become interactive, engaging the viewer, and allowing each viewer to write his own meaning and have his own thoughts.

I propose, that in that decision by the judges, the artist became the story teller of a new and current tale far more relative and engaging than the old tale already told….perhaps the judges recognized his genius though he himself did not.

[Scout]

That is too funny! Scout

[Blake]

MountainSong
What a great scenario and so well told.
I admire your insight
Thank you for enlightening me
Blake

[Jasonik]

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14933-2240405,00.html

[Jasonik]

BBC AUDIO (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today2_20060615.ram)