42-foot tall toy rabbit by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, Örebro, Sweden, 2011
Everyone has an opinion and many say they have the answer. The only thing that is for sure is that people keep making it and redefining it.
Andy Warhol made art out of soup cans. He didn't design the soup can - an artist who needed a job did. I just did a "search" and no one seems to know who the artist was who made the label. It doesn't matter - he/she could not define that soup can as art.
Andy Warhol was the artist who said everyday objects were art.
That was 40 years ago. Try to sell your soup can now. Actually, you couldn't back then either. It's about the concept - not the object.
There is a whole school of art that is into making things that will self-destruct.
Before Warhol there was Marcel Duchamp. The Museum of Modern Art purchased his "Bicycle Wheel" in 1955. It was a bicycle wheel attached to a stool and the third copy based on the lost original from 1913… In August of 1995 it was stolen from the museum one day, only to be thrown back over the sculpture garden wall the next day. The museum "restored" the damaged piece. Rumor has it, the wheel was so badly bent that they just bought another one. The thief was never caught.
It's stories like this that make people suspicious of art and defensive.
I think art is something that makes you stop and think - even if that thought is "what is it”? Invoking wonder in an age of “we know everything” is a powerful thing.
When I was living in New York in the 70’s a friend of a friend had gotten a commission to put floating lights in the Hudson River. I’m sorry I can’t remember the artists name – or find the installation on line now… this happens – a lot of installation work done before the digital age is lost.
We went out in a rowboat one day to change the bulbs. You couldn’t really see the drawing from land – He wanted it to be seen from the air – which could be a airplane or a skyscraper…
I got a very different view of this piece but it has stayed with me forever. I saw the pieces of the whole surviving the current and the big waves – this was lower Manhattan, where the river kisses the ocean at last after a long journey. It was pure magic.
It was an experience I have never forgotten. I think maybe that is what art is – an experience you can’t forget.
You don’t have to know anything about art or the history of art, to know when something makes you stop and think. When that happens – you’ve probably just looked at some art.
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Mary Petruska is an artist living in Wildwood, and still looking around for the answer.
The Trenton Arts Council has invited people who are active in the arts to submit articles for this column. Discussion, reviews, or idea will be content of the articles. The column is about the arts, including writing, visual arts, music, dance, and photography. Different writers will convey differing perspectives and differing specialties.