Because of this I am very picky about judging if a stuffed animal is cute or not; and so I found a lot of them are very ugly. That's probably one of the reasons I don't like Mike Kelley's work very much.
I can't believe this installation was sold for 2.7 million dollars once! 'many viewers had a very empathic relationship with the stuffed animals' says the artist. I guess it makes sense if most of the viewers are westerners who generally grow up with lots of stuffed animals. It must be painful for them to see bunch of them are tangled together, abandoned, dirty, and without any identities.
I read an article which the artist wrote, talking about his works. Seems he mostly talked about the viewers reactions towards his work and how he made the work. He didn't mention much what his original message is exactly. And he is even a bit surprised this second work caused people to think it's a 'cruel treatment'. I mean what do you expect when you put bunch of abandoned dolls so randomly with some of them facing inwards toward the wall? Apparently, He just wanted people to enjoy and appreciate the 'beautiful geometric form' he created with the dolls. I personally don't see a whole lot of beautiful geometric forms; maybe I'm just judging it too much with my own taste.
To me, just making a work without any message is kind of a waste of time. It's like a beautiful person without soul. Perhaps I'm just being arrogant, there are lots of people living happily without souls, is it wrong? It's probably not wrong, it is just part of life. And that is just part of art.
No comments:
Post a Comment