von der Kunst

Hey, you. Watch this. video: Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sol LeWitt’s letter to Eva Hesse (YouTube)

For the fourth round of RogueOlympics, with the theme “trash”/“Abfall.” I wrote the following on RogueBricks:

This banana needs no introduction...

Conceptual art is often controversial. From readymades—found objects, often refuse—such as Duchamp’s Fountain, to instances of contemporary art being accidentally thrown out by cleaning personnel, work in galleries made from highly unconventional materials is often lumped in with trash in one way or another.

This build uses 2 pieces (or 3, if you count the sticker, which appeared in several Power Miners sets^?).

Sol LeWitt has an essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” he writes new materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art writes most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones that lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well and I wonder what he would think of the banana, does it justify itself? its materials? Comedian isn’t the banana taped to the wall but the idea and instructions; an artist sued Cattelan because he taped a banana and an orange to sheets of green paper in 2001 and the court found one cannot claim a copyright in the idea of affixing a banana to a vertical plane using duct tape found that the works were not substantially similar when you remove this element; the court’s order for summary judgment (PDF, 401 KB) notes the exact specifications of Comedian’s installation were filed under seal and those details are what sold for 120,000 150,000 6.2 million dollars, the idea. LeWitt says conceptual art should be emotionally dry and yet his wall drawings are to me bursting with energy emotion vibration I mean look at the child in that photo^↩ how they are lifted as if by the energy in the room I mean go listen to Roomful of Teeth perform Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices.

I was writing this whole thing for this post about Comedian about whether it’s any good about the questions I have about making things out of Lego like I had to justify it or justify this how I could have done it differently but it was stiff and going nowhere and then I found the letter^↩ from Sol LeWitt to the artist Eva Hesse, and it’s what I needed to hear. (Andrew Scott read it too and I think he’s the better actor but I like Cumberbatch’s version better but maybe Scott’s is more like LeWitt but what would he think who knows) I have an editor’s brain ask myself should I use a <small> or an <aside> for this and get joy from deciding on the details of this website because it’s a kind of writing a kind of precision but I find myself in tension with myself when I try to put some things into that formula: you don’t have to justify your work even to yourself he writes you must practice being stupid writes try to do some bad work and I think you’ll see during this contest I did and I needed to. read between the lines and this is the tension I am writing about in all my other posts, perhaps you’ve felt it too if you’ve ever pushed your hobby your work tried to share it tried to put words to it, when you are trying to make it voice itself in its own material language whatever you do. if I wasn’t posting them on the forum I wouldn’t have given this one or the one with the spilled ink a title at all, but they wouldn’t be the same if they weren’t photos weren’t posts which needed titles wouldn’t exist if they weren’t for this contest, maybe what I made is just the ideas, which defy language, which are shaped by the materials, maybe too much. would they be the same if you built them? try it, and tell me if you find out.

in the essay LeWitt says at the end I dislike the term “work of art” because I am not in favor of work and the term sounds pretentious. But I don’t know what other term to use.