Giving Art a Second Chance

I gave art a bit of a hard time a while ago. And, as lots of boring internet people pointed out, I couldnt have been more wrong. In the spirit of fairness, I decided to give art a second chance. After (scan) reading through all of those Reddit comments to see where I might be going wrong, I took my newly open mind, and headed down to the Frieze Art Fair in London.

Walking in, this lady was the first thing I saw. On a normal day, I would have seen her Primark clothes that she'd customised with cuddly vaginas and had to fight the urge to shake her to death while screaming "GROW THE FUCK UP!".

But I guess she did put a lot of effort into making that thing, and what I have I done with my time that's so special? Gotten stoned and watched 4OD? And, even if it's not my cup of tea, there must be some people out there who like it (right?) And it's good that she's expressing herself? And it certainly does accentuate her back cleavage.

Aaaaand I can't do this anymore. Sorry folks, I really wanted to go in and try and appreciate some of this stuff, but this is the first thing I stopped to take a look at. What am I meant to do with this? It doesn't look nice, so it's not one of those kind of art pieces, so I can only assume it's here for the message. This is an art fair in 2011, and I'm an adult. This is not my the back page of my High School Homework Diary. Why the fuck are you showing me a dollhouse full of erect penis' and mutilated Barbies?  I guess the piece did briefly get me to confront my own fears of coming home to find that my dining room table had been replaced with a giant silver erection, but beyond that, this is just teenage garbage.

And on to this. Unless I'm missing something, this piece is juxtaposing corporate logos with (what I assume are) freedom fighters. Seriously? Are you my friend that smashed the "S" on a Shell Garage when he was 15?

The text that I managed to read says "Cock face, get the fuck out of Iraq/ Afghanistan/ Yemen/ Egypt." which, presumably, deals with themes of getting the fuck out of Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt and Iraq. Cock face.

I just googled the artist, and she's almost seventy years old. Which has got me thinking that maybe this is part of the joke? Like, how she obviously painted the image to look primitive and amateur, maybe she's deliberately using Rock Against Bush level politics to make the sentiment primitive and amateur too? IDK.

I have no idea. Next!

According to the accompanying text, this piece "critiques the neon sign through the medium of the neon sign". Alrighty then.

You probably saw this guy in the papers. He's trying to sell a couple of boats at the fair. One is a superyacht which costs 60 million if bought from a regular superyacht shop, but he's selling his for 75 million, as his comes with a certificate that officially designates it "art".

Which is almost making me shake with rage. Not just because I'm mad that I didn't think of it first, but because this is disgusting and wasteful. Can't some people come and #occupy this pile of shit instead? I'm sorry if it makes me a phillistine, I just can't look at this shit and not see anything other than a ridiculous, unfair waste of time and money.

Full disclosure: I didn't read the artist's statement because it was majorly TLDR, but presumably it's making some kind of statement about women and body image and pain and blah blah. But it's not like you really get presented any new information in the way that you would with a newspaper or Wikipedia article, you will only think about something that you already know about. So is the idea of these shoes with pins on just to make you stop and think about how shitty high heels are for a few seconds? Fine, high heels are shitty. But can you imagine the amount of people and money that was involved in this piece from it's conception through to you seeing it on this blog here? It's mind-bloggling.

This one was called "My Motherland can Fuck your Fatherland".

Can't we just go back to using Myspace to air political views like this? It would be cheaper and, really, Myspace just looks nicer than this.

I'll leave you with this piece. A performance by some people called Callum Hill and Adham Faramawy, the latter of which I am told is VERY cool and important. I'm not gonna spend any time trying to work out what it might mean, because it doesn't mean a fucking thing, but these guys excercised shirtless…

While this poor, mislead girl (who will one days probably be somebody's GRANDMOTHER) got "Frieze 2011" and "fuck it" tattooe'd on to her head. Great job everyone!