Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Media / Visual Art / News Bites "Clunkers"—or masterpieces?
Posted by Michael Miner on 12.21.11 at 03:00 PM
Johnson's most provocative case in point: the Arthur Rubloff paperweight collection in the bottom floor of the Art Institute. He calls them "moderately pretty hunks of glass."
And "tchotchkes."
Well, of course they are. I have passed them often in the Art Institute without ever once slowing my stride, but I have never doubted their right to be there. If the A.I. says they're art they're art—end of story. Marcel Duchamp worked all this out decades ago. Duchamp was the father of "readymades," stuff that became art because he said it was.
His most famous readymade, of course, was Fountain, a 1917 piece that before Duchamp told us differently, was simply a urinal. Actually, he didn't tell us differently—he told us, here is a urinal and it is art. He signed it, thus nailing down its new status, though he signed it "R. Mutt," adding that element of ambiguity with which the 20th century left the 19th far behind.
Wikipedia tells us this about Fountain:
In December 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British art world professionals.The Independent noted in a February 2008 article that with this single work, Duchamp invented conceptual art and "severed forever the traditional link between the artist's labour and the merit of the work."
I know what you're thinking: A urinal is transgressive, but a paperweight is just a paperweight.
But this is the deeper artistic message of the Rubloff collection. Duchamp and his acolytes made transgression the cheap and easy route to artistic immortality. By now, well into the 21st century, there is nothing at all transgressive about transgression. It's the same old same old. We laugh off people who try to offend us by being offensive. What does manage to offend us, and Johnson's article in Wednesday's Tribune is a perfect example of this, is a claim of art when it's made for an amiable, inoffensive tchotchke.
The very idea makes our blood boil. I'm not saying that Rubloff's paperweights should be regarded as the most influential art collection of the 21st century, but they belong in the conversation.
Comments (3)
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The AIC accepted the paperweights - and during Rubloff's life displayed them very prominently, in the corridor over the railroad tracks - in order to suck up to Rubloff and ensure that they got a very large donation when he died. But now they could be put to good use by being sold off, with the income devoted to restoring Red Grooms's and Mimi Gross's City of Chicago (1967) which has been in storage for decades. And City of Chicago would be great on the main floor of the Modern Wing, where it would go far toward salvaging that banal empty space.
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rubloff ’s paperweight collection? provocative?
little wonder ‘occupy chicago’ can’t get much chicago ink — you guys are simply not provocative enough …
idea - go occupy the area around the paperweight collection & maybe johnson will call you guys "sore thumbs" taking up precious space … that would be provocative...for both johnson & you guys, so everybody wins.
"I'm not saying that Rubloff's paperweights should be regarded as the most influential art collection of the 21st century, but they belong in the conversation."
Great, and I think that the Reader should display my aunt's salt and pepper shaker collection in its lobby.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GI…
