Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]If he is indeed playing a deliberate joke on us, then I can accept it. As an expression of photographic art (or just art, period), I cannot. To me Eggleston's exhibit is in the same category as another recent exhibit at a Danish art gallery (in Kolding, a town in Jutland). One of the items consisted of 10 blenders, each filled with water and containing a gold fish. The viewers were invited to turn on a blender if they wished to do so, and several did. Another exhibit at a modern art museum I saw recently consisted of two washing machines placed a few meters apart and running continuously. Sorry, but I just do not see any of the examples above as art; to me, they are fraud. Most of the people who have come to Eggleston's defence in this thread do far superior work to anything I saw at the exibit. As my final comment, let me quote someone from the UK who signed the photography museum's guest book: "If this is art, then I suppose I will get myself a cheap point and shoot and become an artist too..." Nathan Jeff S wrote: > Maybe the artist is playing a joke on us? > > Awhile ago, I found myself the only one in the crowd (no other smiles, > some deep-in-thought looks) who was laughing at the sight of a urinal on > a pedestal in the San Francisco MoMA: This one, you see, had been > touched by the great Marcel Duchamp and what, 70 years after the fact, > his gag still has the power to bamboozle a crowed. In another room was a > giant silkscreen painting that Andy Warhol had personally taken a whiz > upon (the placard didn't say so, but read his diaries, look at the > peed-upon look of the painting and draw your own conclusions). We should > probably be grateful that neither of these two men carried these themes > to their logical conclusions but no doubt such, ah, creations would've > found a place of great honor in galleries and museums. > -- > > Jeff Segawa > Somewhere in Boulder, Colorado - -- Nathan Wajsman Overijse, Belgium and Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: wajsman@webshuttle.ch General photo page: http://members.tripod.com/belgiangator Belgium photo page: http://members.xoom.com/wajsman