The Beauty of Modern Art
An artist’s sculpture has been rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts which has instead opted to display the wooden support it was put on.
David Hensel, 64, from East Grinstead, West Sussex, was told the laughing head would be part of the summer exhibition.
But at a preview he found that just a piece of wood intended to support the head was on display on the plinth.
The Academy said the judging panel assumed the two pieces were separate and decided the support was better.
You can follow the link to see pictures of both the sculpture and the plinth.
Now, there’s several way to look at this story (but then, isn’t there always when modern art is involved?): either it was a cock up of mythic proportions— imagine, the philistines are running the show over there at the Royal Academy and don’t even know their own asses form a plinth— or, it was just a mix up, the judges were told that the plinth was a separate piece and judged it accordingly, weighing it’s aesthetic merits against those of the 10,000 or so other entries, and found the laughing head wanting in comparison to it’s base.
Of course, at some point regardless of which view you take, you have to realise that the Lord High Curators of Artistic Merit for all of Bloody England chose a block of wood over an actual object recognizable as a work of sculpture. There is no other use for a discrete laughing head. It serves no possible purpose except an artistic one, while a block of wood has infinite possible uses. We could then say that the judges were merely signifying that they are for the infinite in art, rather than the singular. Or rather, they’re all a bunch of dingbats.
Link via Crooked Timber.