May 2012
“The literary fairy tale, like the music of jazz, is an improvisation on a theme. It eschews our modern obsession with novelty, our insistence on plots that surprise on every page and ideas that have never been uttered before. Like jazz, it is best appreciated by those with an ear for the original melody on which it is based. The pleasure lies in savoring the writer’s skill as she or he transforms a familiar story.”
—Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, from their introduction to Black Thorn, White Rose (1995)
“This is perhaps best exemplified by Christoph Büchel’s contribution to the Sculpture Park, several examples of his new series 1% which were placed, unmarked, around the fair’s grounds. Comprising six shopping carts, each filled with all of the belongings of a homeless New Yorker, purchased by Büchel for $300 to $500 apiece, the carts are being sold by Büchel’s gallery Hauser & Wirth, with prices ranging from $30,000 to $50,000; the “1%” in question refers to the fact that the amount Büchel paid for each cart represents 1% of its new value, once inscribed as a work of art. Though there is, I suppose, an argument to be made for the project as a critique of art-market capitalism, in which the authorial touch of the artist can transform objects that are otherwise considered not only worthless, but also downright squalid by most, into things of monetary and cultural value; it might function better if the artist himself—and his gallery—didn’t profit so heavily from it. Whatever Büchel’s aims for the project might have been, it struck me as exploitative”
—
Rhizome. So we’ve gotten to this point, have we? Where poor people, when they make something, it’s just trash. But when fancy people touch that thing, their magic fancy transubstantiation touch makes it Art? How is this not the essence of class prejudice?
If I had my One Law About Art, it would be that something is what it is, trash or Art, irregardless of who made it, and how much money they spent on grad school. And that the person who made it (even if they’re the $10 an hour assistant) is the artist.
(via mollycrabapple)
