five thousand shades of blue
Friday, October 04, 2002
...but is it art?
It was a tradition during my tenure in high school for a member of the senior class to sneak a photo of themselves into the freshman class lineup, usually looking pretty dorky or greasy or otherwise, well, "froshy". My freshman year was no different: one of the senior boys snuck himself in with the name of "Hugh E. Rection". Haw, haw, haw.
It seems that someone has pulled a similar sort of prank on the folks in charge of running the Mayor's Art Show, the opening of which happens during the Eugene Celebration. One of the accepted works, "What Was Wall 34" by Lydia Bentfeather-Brown, is neither a modern Mondrian-esque abstraction nor is Ms. Bentfeather-Brown a Ms.
Rumour has it, according to "Deep Dish Dinah" of
The Comic News, that it's really just a chunk of industrial paint room wall submitted by one Kyle Mulligan. It was a section of wall that canvasses were leaned up against as they were painted, inevitably leading horizontal and vertical lines along the edges. And it would seem that the title was more apt than anyone knew.
It could, however, be argued that his choice of that particular part of the wall consititutes art in and of itself. Seeing only a black and white photo of the work, it's hard to tell really if it's any better than paintings I've seen hanging in the
Albright-Knox. Having had art history as a minor, I can appreciate the more abstract forms of art. Picasso had an amazing command of the human figure; he chose to express his art abstractly instead.
Anyway. As Dinah said, you have to feel a little bit sorry for the 490 people who were told their art wasn't as good as a discarded paint shop wall.
is
this just not enough…?
