A Young Artist Who Mostly Draws Attention

[Merlion]

He is all out to get 'attention'. Click on to read details how he pursued this 'project'.

A Young Artist Who Mostly Draws Attention

NEW YORK, June 5 (WashingtonPost) -- Do not call it a hoax.

Yazmany Arboleda prefers to think of his art installation, and the swarm of police, Secret Service officers and journalists that it drew, as a piece of performance art. Or a project.

"My point is to bring substance back,"
Yazmany Arboleda says of his controversial exhibit

"Anyone who calls it a hoax is misguided," says the diminutive, hyper 28-year-old. "They don't understand -- there are many layers to this."

The "this" he is referring to is an exhibition of his work titled "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton" and "The Assassination of Barack Obama." It's a collection that would surely have gone unnoticed but for that oh-no-he-didn't name. One image is a massive redo of the cover of Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," but retitled "The Audacity of Black People." Another is a photographic image of Clinton, appearing ravaged with wrinkles, accompanied by the words "The Face of Experience." And those are about the only ones we can describe in a family newspaper.

Still, not exactly incendiary -- until you add the title of the exhibition, which Arboleda stenciled on an empty storefront's window near Times Square, a space that he spent $5,000 to rent for two days, Wednesday and Thursday. He hadn't yet had the chance to hang the art when police saw the words on Wednesday morning and decided they wanted a word or two with Arboleda. He was quickly summoned by the owner of 264 W. 40th St. ....

[cheesepaws]

I loved this kid's quote:

"My mission as an artist is to raise dialogue and conversation about substantive things," he says, staring through arty glasses that did not have any lenses. "There's so much media time spent on superficial things -- like celebrities. My point is to bring substance back."

Of course, the article said next to nothing about the art itself and focused on the spectacle. Mission failed.

The clueless ego, however, is strangely appealing. Ah, youth.

[fused]

If intent is a big part of artmaking? This "news making event" appears more like a fraud than a hoax.
Shock and aw shit.

hey lkky00245, take your assinine spamming elsewhere

[WeiMingKai]

I liked this part of the article:

"...yesterday, the guy looked exhilarated, like he'd just pulled off some impossible triple flip in the pike position. This is a town crammed with artists, and most of them wait years to get a single mention in the press. A tiny fraction ever mount a show that earns widespread attention. As Arboleda readied for an on-camera interview with Channel 9 late yesterday afternoon, his friends were lugging in beer for the after party. "

So what is really the point of this art? Self aggrandizement and promotion for the artist - to get his work noticed - the entire project seemed calculated to do just that, that was the goal. Well, he has succeeded but is notoriety and fame (infamy?) the end that justifies any means to attain it?

Is THAT art?

If creating a disturbance is art, if provoking the authorities to act against you by an obvious and direct means like implying the assassination of a presidential candidate is art, if frightening, confusing, or offending people is art - and the merit of the art is a function of the degree to which it provokes an 'official' response - then why don't art schools simply have every masters thesis require 'artists' to commit an anti-social act sufficiently alarming or disruptive that the student is investigated by the police/federal agencies? The grade and quality of each MFA aspirant can be judged in terms of the amount of press coverage, official comment/condemnation, expense of the police & federal investigation into the artist created disturbance, and to the general level of documented societal outrage towards the artist - including perhaps the severity of the consequent prosecution & prison sentence and the gruesome details of the abuse and dehumanizing experiences the artist has while incarcerated - the entire chain of events and the aftermath of the artists 'achievement' can be considered one large performance piece.

In a world where 'personal notoriety at any cost' is the battle cry of the 'Artist' - then perhaps the consequences for seeking notoriety should be seen as something these 'great' men of creative genius are willing to risk and gladly suffer in pursuit of expanding the rich and storied tapestry of human artistic expression.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps a little punk with an elaborate plan to make a big stink and get noticed should be called on his BS shortcut to 'Art' fame and get deposited and flushed with all the other by now annoyingly familiar 'shock art' hacks down the gurgling commode of history. Their artistic merit having been correctly assessed as notable only for its malevolent hucksterism or else revelatory of the artists impressive magnitude of solipsistic ignorance and egoistic arrogance. In that case congratulations and bravo Mr. Arboleda! - you have attained your dream of being a publicly acknowledged douchebag.

[GlennT]

Unfortunately, we live in an era whose media culture tends to value "fame" more than accomplishment.

[evaldart]

Originally Posted by GlennT

Unfortunately, we live in an era whose media culture tends to value "fame" more than accomplishment.

Glenn, its only unfortunate if you place importance upon participating in said "culture". I believe that that truly creative people - the ones really making a difference - are oblivious to the culture that occurs around them. Above it. This "place" going-on is a handy source of food, paint and tools (and some occasional avocational excesses), but your Art should reflect inner singularities, hungry ones that eat-up nourishing moments voraciously as they come to be.

Fame? Ha! only the ants will take notice, and only for a fleeting moment.

[GlennT]

Originally Posted by evaldart

Glenn, its only unfortunate if you place importance upon participating in said "culture".

It is unfortunate in the sense that I have greater hope for individuals and the use of their precious time on Earth than occurs in the vain pursuit of dubious fame. Why this cry to be noticed that is more compelling than doing what is right in the world? Unfortunate for the souls who have not found a deeper meaning for their lives.

[Merlion]

For those interested, here below is the artist Yazmany Arboleda's homepage.

Yazmany

And here he got a news report in the NYTimes. He got detained and questioned by the police and secret service.

Secret Service Detains Artist Over ‘Assassination’ Exhibit

[Firnafth]

evaldart:

I believe it is impossible for any person to avoid being affected by culture. Culture is one of the things that is considered to make humans unique among animals; and it occurs wherever people get together. To avoid culture, one would have to truly be a hermit. But also, people are affected by cultures they encounter to varying degrees, whether naturally or by choice. In any place, there are many kinds of cultures.

I think many great artists took to reflect the culture that surrounded them, although I do not think that to make good art it is necessary to do so.

Yet if culture is that which is shared among the masses, it follows that great art becomes a part of culture, because one of the marks of great art (at least I suspect) is relatively universal appeal.

[obseq]

Interesting.

Recently, I was reading a brief article, (more of a blurb) in a non-art magazine about artists of this ilk--
They weren't referred to as sculptors or painters etc, but rather nebulously as...(get ready)


'Pop Satirists'

...I quickly realized that my gag-reflex is in good shape.
I've been trying to dig up the article without any luck.

[suburbanartists]

Art Nerd Alert!!!!!!!!!

Surprised anyone even noticed much less cared. Seems very tame (rhymes with lame) to me....... especially by nyc standards.

Little ado about even less.

Next.

[StevenW]

It's too easy to dismiss, label and pounce on him for an otherwise irellevant 5-minutes of whoopdeedo. The gotcha game the P.C. media plays is a plague on us all. What he is doing is no different than any other pop-artist, the only difference being that he hasn't made a name. The work itself is ultimately just as shallow.. He does hammer television and the libs and that at least can't be all that bad.

The work itself dwells in the gleeb land of sign-making though and that's just FLAT out boring. I found the most entertaining part about any of it were quotes from his blog:

The great thing about television is that if something important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you can always change the channel. Taxi

Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some. Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. Ann Landers (1918 - 2002)

Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work. Gallagher

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Fred Allen (1894 - 1956)

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

I think that parents only get so offended by television because they rely on it as a babysitter and the sole educator of their kids. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Death, 1997

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. Rod Serling (1924 - 1975)


Oh, the Obama cock and Hillary pant suit thing was kinda funny for a second or two.. Who said next? Next!

[grommet]

Just seems like a lark to me, proving one more time that it's a do-it-yourself sort of world. If you stick your neck out, you'll be noticed. You may also get your head snapped off, but that's the hazard.It's the art equivalent of a garage band-- conceived after a kegger. There's more bravado than skill usually.
What did you do with YOUR weekend?

[Mr. Malloy]

There is a certain amount of pleasure getting noticed. They say that even bad publicity is still PUBLICITY! For the artist, it can mean being noticed, just to be noticed, even though the art sucks. I thought this piece is conceptually pretty cool. but just that. not GOOD but ok. The small town I live in has no art school and no university and few of us went to art school, so when i know i am showing a piece, I have found that if I keep the attitude "I will make a piece that I know they will not like" That is when I do my best work (according to people who know 'art'. In this case I would appreciate 'bad publicity' from the local closed-minded news paper.