{"id":707,"date":"2010-09-24T10:16:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T15:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=707"},"modified":"2010-09-24T10:16:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T15:16:48","slug":"artprize-performance-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"ArtPrize Performance Art…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press<\/em>, September 18, 2010<\/p>\n

Many years ago my friend Mert had an installation at an art gallery in Detroit. An installation is a room or area that is set up with several works of art and usually has some sort of central theme. That\u2019s the basic idea, anyway. There are variations and I\u2019m sure an installation could be created outside of that definition (a minimalist might, for example, paint an empty room white and name it \u201cuntitled\u201d), but for the purpose of this story, that\u2019s what an installation is.
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\nThe gallery had three rooms for installations in the basement. You\u2019d walk down one flight of stairs, go from one room to another, and go back up another flight of stairs. (That\u2019s the right term, isn\u2019t it? Flight of stairs? Looks weird when you see it written twice.) Mert had the first room. I can\u2019t remember the name of his exhibit (perhaps he will chime in here and let us know), but it was a series of painted cutouts — some six foot tall on the floor, some hanging from the ceiling — and it was about the experience of driving through the Detroit Metro area. I actually wrote a review of it and submitted it to a local art magazine (never printed, I wasn\u2019t part of the local art club). But that was like 427 computers ago. I probably have a backup of it on a SyQuest cartridge or a floppy disk the size of notebook paper. I\u2019m not going to look for it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Mert\u2019s artwork was bright and colorful and edgy and in your face. There was nothing esoteric about it. You really didn\u2019t have to guess at the point he was trying to make. If, say, a penis was required — BAM! — there was a big ol\u2019 cartoony penis. No veiled allusions. The next two exhibits, however, were just dripping with pretentious symbolism. The one after Mert\u2019s was titled, \u201cLe Petit Mort.\u201d It was a dense awful arrangement of various shades of black drapes and God-only-knows what because you could barely see anything. I\u2019m embarrassed to say that I actually knew what the title meant — in French it\u2019s literally \u201cthe little death,\u201d but it\u2019s a metaphor for orgasm. (You live in a house with a guy from France for a year in college, you pick up important stuff like that.) The installation after that was at least technically a little bit impressive — there were ponds with fish, lots of shiny things like ruby slippers, but beyond the Wizard of Oz references, incomprehensible.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, as you can guess, I didn\u2019t particularly care for the other two installations. That\u2019s was fine. It was art, and others apparently found it worthwhile, so good for them, and I was glad they had the opportunity to express themselves. The thing that bothered me is how badly the other artists (that is, real artistes<\/em><\/strong>) treated Mert. Shunned him, basically. Treated him as a lesser person who, to paraphrase my cartoon, could not possibly understand the greatness of their art. So last week when my editor sent me a link to a Wall Street Journal article on ArtPrize and a few real artistes opined, in effect, \u201cEwww, Grand Rapids.\u201d And when several real artistes complained last year about ArtPrize winners being largely a function of location and popularity. And when real artistes begrudge others earned money. I draw a cartoon.<\/p>\n

Hey, if you want to see some of Mert\u2019s current illustration & cartoon art, click here<\/a>. And if you don\u2019t know anything about ArtPrize, click here<\/a> (and make a point of visiting downtown GR in the next couple of weeks).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, September 18, 2010 Many years ago my friend Mert had an installation at an art gallery in Detroit. An installation is a room or area that is set up with several works of art and usually has some sort of central theme. That\u2019s the basic idea, anyway. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}