Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers
- Reference: 1623062714
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/07/invisible_sculpture_is_a_must/
- Source link:
Salvatore Garau - an Italian artist from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia – was a drummer for prog rock band Stormy Six in the 1970s before his career skipped a beat and he became an artist.
His works have appeared in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and in museums and galleries of contemporary art across Europe.
[1]
But it is his latest work - Io sono , which translates into I am – which is causing a stir in the art world selling for €14,820 to a private Milanese collector through the Art-Rite Auction House two weeks ago.
[2]
[3]
[4]Youtube Video
In an [5]interview posted on Art-Rite Auction House’s website , the artist shines a light on some of his influences.
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“Intangible sculptures are works that I feel physical,” he said.
“In the void there is a container of positive and negative possibilities that are constantly equivalent, in short, there is a density of events.
“Furthermore, the void is nothing more than a space full of energy, even if we empty it of electromagnetic fields, neutrinos, dark matter, everything in short and nothing remains, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which I recently read with enthusiasm). Nothing has a weight! It, therefore, has energy that condenses and turns into particles, in short, in us!
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“The intuition I had as an artist, for which abstract and spiritual, is instead supported by science,” he said.
Quite so.
[8]WTH are NFTs? Here is the token, there is the Beeple....
[9]We'll explore Titan with a methane submarine, a methane submarine, a methane submarine...
[10]PSA: The 2020 monolith is a dead meme. You can stop putting them up now. Please
[11]Show me the Monet: Late Samsung chairman's family settles inheritance tax bill, massive art donation
Culture Vultures of a certain age will, no doubt, reflect on the unfathomable contradictions between space and energy posed by Garau when recollecting that other great work, [12]Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII or "a pile of bricks" as was so shamelessly coined by the popular press.
Reportedly, this fetched an eye-watering sum at the time with some cheeky brickies suggesting they could knock one up with a few half-inched blocks and the cost of a pie and a pint.
Of course, not only was this an astute and enduring piece of art, it has also proved to be a shrewd investment. Have you seen the price of building materials today? ®
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[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRqYZaXnVaY
[5] https://www.art-rite.it/it/news/detail/14489
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL5Cn0xX0@YFWxCUbKfUlAAAANU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/04/what_is_nft/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/22/kraken_mare_titan/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/08/monolith_is_dead_meme/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/28/samsung_inheritance_tax/
[12] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/andre-equivalent-viii-t01534
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
ART!
Think I'll just quote my father's reaction - "Not my money - good luck to him!"
I had one of those invisible sculptures as well!
Put it down somewhere and can't find the bloody thing now.....
Re: Art!
My partner, many moons ago, persuaded her farther to take her to the polluted shit hole to see a Karl Andre exhibition. She was somewhat embarrassed to see him walk across said bricks to reach the other side of the gallery, unaware he traversed the artwork she had gone to view!
Re: Art!
The other AC>> take her to the polluted shit hole
Margate?
"to see him walk across said bricks"
That's art too!
Re: "to see him walk across said bricks"
Art in action; walking across the bricks adds an active element to the installation, thereby validating their existence and giving them context.
I can write bollocks too.
I would just like to make clear that no self respecting brickie will get out of bed for a pie and pint.
A suggestion
The purchaser should read "The Emperor's New Clothes".
Quantum fluctuations
Just knew that my physics course would pay off in the end / beginning / mid life crisis...
Re: Quantum fluctuations
Drummer -> sculptor -> philosopher/physicist?
Still stuck at the drummer stage I think ;)
"there is a density"
So true. In this case the density appears to be that of the purchaser.
Ownership of the said artwork...
can be proven by ownership of the Non-tangible Token.
auction!
Going, going, gone! To the invisible, undisclosed bidder, for just over 150 trillion USD.
So he produced nothing and advertised the hell out of it. He's a marketer..
My problem is that I don't have the balls to be that brazen; I kind of envy him spouting so much bollocks that some silly sod buys into it.
That seems to cover a significant portion of "modern art".
From the tate page on the bricks
"Each of Andre’s Equivalent series consists of a rectangular arrangement of 120 firebricks. Although the shape of each sculpture is different, they all have the same height, mass and volume, and are therefore ‘equivalent’ to each other. "
I mean what the hell!?! He doesn't even attempt to recreate the work in a consistent fashion and has some story as to how him not doing anything has special cosmic significance?
Something deep down tells me I will never be wealthy..
Re: From the tate page on the bricks
" Something deep down tells me I will never be wealthy.. "
+1
I don't think I'm psychologically capable of spouting that much bullshit with a straight face.
Re: From the tate page on the bricks
You're too honest to be a salesman!
Re: I don't think I'm psychologically capable of spouting that much bullshit with a straight face.
Some people are born with it, I suppose, but majority just practice. And with each 'success', their confidence level goes up one notch on the bullshitter scale. Probably to the point that they soon start believing it themselves. But it's sad times anyway.
Thanks for the Stormy Six tip
I hadn't heard of them before. They're rather good.
drummer =/ artist
What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A Drummer...
No wonder he had to change fields before he could become an artist...
Re: drummer =/ artist
Drummer:
Should get a better dictionary
"Intangible sculptures are works that I feel physical"
intangible
adjective
unable to be touched; not having physical presence
It is a constant source of annoyance to me that some of the least talented artists in the world are also the ones most likely to make money from ridiculous crap anyone could knock up if they had access to the same materials. I'm going to include my long-standing rant about Jackson Pollock and his splishy-splashy nonsense, because I enjoy seeing him being defended in ever more ludicrous ways. What? My splishes wouldn't be the same as his? That's how 'throwing a bucket of paint around a canvas' works - it's all random, and it's all nonsense.
On the other hand, you have to give some credit to these people - they know how to make money, mainly from a talent for writing nonsensical bios about themselves and their work, which is what they use to sucker the idiot buyers.
My rule of thumb: if someone else, someone without any claim to artistic talent, could make something similar without too much trouble, it isn't great art. And now they're making invisible art. 1000 face palms.
Re: Should get a better dictionary
Your rule of thumb is a little naive. First of all there are two very different aspects of "Art".
Let's take a rather famous and extreme example of something that not only someone else could make, but actually had made: Marcel Duchamp's famous dadaist [1] "Fountain" (Wikipedia) , featuring a (literally) bog-standard urinal bought at a plumbing supplies store... Well, that's really not art, isn't it, anybody could buy (and had indeed bought) that specific model of urinal before and after Duchamp. So, was Duchamp just taking the piss?
Actually Duchamp's point was exactly that: Making people think about what is actually "Art" . Is Art some intangible quality an artist can magically bestow upon about anything, like in this extreme case? It's true we don't really know what "Art" is, and there are probably as many wildly different definitions as people you ask about it. So Marcel Duchamp's urinal, while not "Art" in the noble sense, was nevertheless a fundamental milestone in Art History.
The second aspect are the "art collectors". Most of the time they don't care or understand anything about Art, except for the potential for profit: Buy some poor promising artist's works for cheap, wait till he croaks (ideally soon and dramatically), profit! Marcel Duchamp's urinal was never intended for sale (and was never sold), but put yourself in his situation, if some crazy rich guy had come and offered you tens of thousands for that stupid thing, would you say no? Artists need to eat too...
Art is not just defined by technical perfection and brilliance of execution, it is also defined by the very special impression it makes upon the spectator, the stroke of genius, the certain something which makes you go "wow". Saying "I can make that" is rather silly, with a little training you could indeed do about anything, but did you ?...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
Imagine trying to insure sell or ship the "artwork"
Try and describe it's appearance (white cat in a snowstorm or a black cat in a coal mine with no lights)
Approximate dimensions (somewhere between infinitely small and infinitely big)
Approximate weight (think of a number, triple it or divide it by zero if it's a friday then decide whether you just worked out the weight in milligrams or megatons)
On a positive note I think I am about to be very rich as I have just discovered I am the proud owner of at least 5000 artworks similar to the one just sold (it's amazing what you find under the sofa)
You don't need to insure it
It will outlast us all. Timeless, transcendent.
Art
If that’s art, the F must be silent.
It's art
If it also happens to be a con trick that doesn't invalidate it as an artwork. In fact, isn't that part of the work?
All works of art are objectively pointless, or at least the art bit of them is. A picture of a haywain can cover a stain on the wall but not because it's a picture of a haywain, because it's a square of canvas.
And the disbelieving comments are a lovely extension of the work, nudging it slightly towards reality.
Smashing!
Money for Nothing
Are you sure this guy didn't play with Dire Straits?
There's nothing new here
I've seen this done before. At least 20 years ago I was in one of the London museums - I think it was Tate Modern soon after it first opened - and I saw something very similar. There was an empty space with a knee-height rope barrier around it to stop people walking through it. I'm really struggling to remember the name of the artist but I'm pretty sure the title of the work on the information card was "Exhibit removed for cleaning".
Still waiting
I'm still waiting for my modelling fee for this sculpture.
At first I thought the exposure might help my career, but I'm not seeing anything yet. Probably should have posed with Paris.
Plagiarism
He clearly stole the design from some homework I didn't do in school
Conning mugs (AKA some (not all) aspects of conceptual art) has long been part of art
So I'm used to seeing dubious art descriptions, its the shoddy "science" in his explanation that irritates me, at least do a proper job of your BS spiel, a schoolkid could have written a more coherent description.
World. Gone. Mad.
In the void there is a container of positive and negative possibilities
Surely by definition there is nothing in a void. A void needs something around it for there be a void in. In this case the "void" can't exists because void has air in it, exactly the same as is surrounding it, ergo there is no void.
Since his "void" is a "container of positive and negative possibilities" it can't be a void because it contains something. But the "somethings" in the void are only possibilities and therefore may not exist, it could be a void. Or not.
Is your head hurting now too?
Oh hey, my parents have one of those in their attic! Might pop it on ebay.