And Then Of Course There’s This

While we’re on the subject of boundary-scorching, swoon-inducing, terribly radical art, it would be remiss of me not to mention this chap. The Argentine artist Leandro Granato has, you’ll be thrilled to hear, found “a new form of expression.” He is, he says, “the author of a new painting style in the art world.” A new style that was born of suffering and woe: “It was a difficult time when I decided to paint with my eye. My whole family thought I was going crazy.” Mr Granato, who boasts an “unusual connection between his nose and eyes,” is more than a mere painter, of course. His art is also a performance: “I try to make each piece of art unique and special,” says he. “I transfer different emotions and feelings into my work.” Because squeezing paint out of your eye is a matter of deep passion and finesse. Oh, there’s more: “While I paint I record the whole piece of art. In this way, the person who buys the art also acquires the DVD that shows how the artist performed that piece of art and what he felt in that moment.”

Yes, eye juice, random spattering and - and – some bonus made-up feelings. That’s value for money, that is. 

Comments

[John D]

That's value for money, that is.

Crap and disgusting. It's two things in one!

[David]

Crap and disgusting. It’s two things in one!

As with the previous example, you have to wonder what it is the punters think they’re getting. There’s no aesthetic on offer, just a bit of circus titillation. It’s not so much art as a freak show with wine and canapés. And as is often the case, the applauding audience is more interesting than the exhibitionist. Anthropologically, I mean.

[Jimmy]

I should have a look back through some of my class readings. There's an essay about why simply recording art/ the act of art, even awfully shitty art, is full of fascinating and arty consequences. Something about making the art 'alive'.

[sk60]

a new form of expression.

Like expressing breast milk?

[Jimmy]

Like expressing breast milk?

A new reservoir of potential.

[Hal]

Hmmm. So if he did a painting of a horse, it'd be one eye and one neigh?

[David]

From the blurb on the Vimeo page, written presumably by Mr Granato himself:

Innovator
Precursor
Transgressor
Extrovert
Creative and crazy
This is Leandro Granato
The artist who added a new page to the book of ART.

It’s always a good sign when the artist feels a need to tell us just how “creative and crazy” he is. And of course transgressive. And that he’s “making great pieces of art.” I can only assume there wasn’t space for mentioning his extraordinary modesty.

[Dr Cromarty]

Innovator
Precursor
Transgressor
Extrovert
Creative and crazy

Pretentious
Twat

[rjmadden]

I almost miss the giant screaming vagina you shared with us a few weeks ago.

[David]

Hey, I’m just trying to nail some culture into you heathens.

[Steve 2]

That's nothing. My cat regularly creates daring and transgressive works of art.

After digesting half a tin of Sheba, she explores what it means to be female and a cat in the 21st century, interrogating the intersection between late-stage consumer capitalism and poop.

Each expression is a unique performance, the cubo-futurist swirls and mounds of Sophisticat Crystal Cat litter suffused with meaning (and poop).

Her tail becomes an ironic question mark, catechising the viewer to reexamine their deepest preconceptions about the unspoken bourgeois power dynamic between owner and pet, and challenging our atavistic motivations for watching a cat poop in the first place.

[LS]

The artists are running out of orifaces with which to exude their creative brilliance.

[dicentra]

the cubo-futurist swirls and mounds of Sophisticat Crystal Cat litter

So she stays within the boundaries of The Box?

How pedestrian.

My late female cat regularly protested the state of her Box by producing transgressive art behind the TV, under the computer desk, and in the doorway of my bedroom.

[David]

You’re not exactly selling the whole idea of cat ownership.

[Hal]

The artists are running out of orifaces with which to exude their creative brilliance.

and

the cubo-futurist swirls and mounds of Sophisticat Crystal Cat litter

So she stays within the boundaries of The Box?

How pedestrian.

Hmmm. Clearly what needs to occur is the conjunction of performance art, painting, sculpture, political expression, and Jason Pollock, where the artist will perform a free fall drop from an airplane or from any tall building, onto the nearest ground level space, without a parachute.

Clearly with this great new advance in artistic, cultural, and political expression, the impact of these artistic advances would be guaranteed. All participating artists would be certain that once they had fully participated in this artistic expression, they would have no concern whatsoever about the facilitation and reception of all subsequent actions.

[the wolf]

He perfected his technique over a two-year period. Because previously the result just looked like random colored spattering on canvas. And now...

[dicentra]

You’re not exactly selling the whole idea of cat ownership.

Of that cat?

I'm afraid I was secretly glad when she became sick enough to put down. I was ready to take her to the pound anyway.

She was gorgeous but no fun at all to take care of.

[AC1]

He can shoot ink out of his arse if he funds it by tickets.

[WTP]

dicentra, I had a similar problem with a girlfriend once. Just once.

[dcardno]

...and just how does being an "Extrovert" pertain to his "art" or the worth thereof, pray tell? When considering whether to have a piece of art in my home, the personality of the artist is just about the last thing I care about.

[Ralph]

It's not so much art as a freak show with wine and canapés.

They could just watch Rude Tube.

[David]

They could just watch Rude Tube.

Well, the internet has pretty much made ‘shock’ art redundant. As I said a while ago, in an age when just about anyone can watch Two Girls One Cup on their smartphone while at work, eating lunch, what’s a transgressive artist to do?

It seems to me that supposedly edgy conceptual artists tend to be the kind of people who simply weren’t good enough to get a job in advertising. For instance, Rocío Boliver, mentioned previously, likes the idea of disturbing her audience and leaving them, as she puts it, “flabbergasted.” She takes pride in her attempts to “wipe the stupid Hollywood smiles off their faces.” And while Ms Boliver is desperately trying to scandalise her own tiny in-group of art students and anti-capitalist poseurs, more skilled people are doing better, much better, in the name of fun and capitalism. Say, by promoting a remake of the film Carrie, while alarming the patrons of a New York coffee shop.

[clazy]

Oh my, that was fun. Don't people who do such things ever worry about inducing heart attacks?

[David]

Don’t people who do such things ever worry about inducing heart attacks?

You mean the coffee shop ‘telekinesis’? It’s pretty good, isn’t it? And the reactions seem to be genuine. And again, this is the thing. Commercial popular culture can be quite good at startling people - and, more to the point, at eliciting the best kind of transgression, i.e., eye-rubbing wonderment. The illusionist Dynamo levitated and walked on water in front of hundreds of startled, giddy Londoners. Things like that – real performance art - don’t rely on squalor and disgust to fish for a reaction. And they make supposedly “transgressive” art look laughably inadequate.

[Rob]

The ultimate: an artist kills himself and his decomposing body is left on show at the Tate as a work of performance art.

[Tim Newman]

Don’t people who do such things ever worry about inducing heart attacks?

I thought that about the prank linked to earlier here with the ghoulish girl suddenly appearing in the lift.

[David]

I still have a soft spot for the impromptu velociraptor.

[present & correct]

That 'Regurgitator' guy -- from the 90's Channel4 edgy-late-night-freak-show offerings -- who used to swallow, amongst other things, live goldfish, lightbulbs & Rubik's Cubes (the puzzle then being regurgitated 'solved') was for more impressive than this crock of shite.
But then he was not an 'Artist', just an entertainer.

[present & correct]

The ultimate: an artist kills himself and his decomposing body is left on show at the Tate as a work of performance art

... wasn't there once some Tibetan monks who slowly mummified themselves to death, on their path to enlightenment?
I'd pay to see the PoMo chancers plagarise that in the Tate.
Maybe they'd resolve their narcissistic ego issues along the way.

[present & correct]

David!.. can you correct my italics in previous post. Thx

[David]

Done.

[Hal]

Oh, Right, and _Now_ I remember . . .

Lesseee . . .

Innovator
Precursor
Transgressor
Extrovert
Creative and crazy

Got It!!!

So, very simply, whichever the person in question, what they all mean is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats

"The Aristocrats" (also known as "The Debonaires" or "The Sophisticates" in some tellings) is a taboo-defying dirty joke that has been told by numerous stand-up comedians since the vaudeville era.

There’s even commentary from the Guardian that tells how old the practice is . . http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/02/3

Barry Cryer It's a fascinating joke. I'm 70, and I first heard it 50 years ago.

So I guess this is actually all about being . . . . totally mundane, normal, prosaic, Extremely traditional, . . . . middle class entertainment, just like all your precursors, and being absaolutely and totally insistent on being recognized as such.

. . . . I’ve got a girl up in the lavat’ry! --- http://alanbates.com/abarchive/film/entertainer.html

[Hal]

Oh, and, of Mr Granato, who boasts an “unusual connection between his nose and eyes,” one is no doubt reassured to learn that apparently he thus has the exact same http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasolacrimal_duct as probably pretty much everyone else on the planet . . .

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me...
You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
Crowd: Yes! We're all Innovators, Precursors, Transgressors, Extroverts, Creative and crazy!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian

[David Gillies]

I'm glad you collate the antics of these oxygen thieves and mostly I can shake my head and laugh in a wry fashion at their pretentiousness and self-regard. But every now and again I wish them to suffer, I don't know, a really spectacular case of trapped wind or something. And I do get rather annoyed that they're not all starving to death. Addicts and mentally unbalanced people often surround themselves with people who tolerate and even facilitate their behaviour: we call them enablers. They are morally culpable. And the people who pay sad talentless exhibitionists to squirt paint out of their eyes are morally culpable.

[Col. Milquetoast]

He can shoot ink out of his arse if he funds it by tickets.

Pffffft! It's been done. The spraying a canvas with paint from his arse I mean. I think David linked to some of his "output" a while back which included photos of the artist, a university professor, at work. Maybe someday we may have the technology to unsee things. The ticket idea seems bold and transgressive.

[David]

He can shoot ink out of his arse if he funds it by tickets.
Pffffft! It’s been done. The spraying a canvas with paint from his arse I mean.

It has indeed, more than a few times. Who could forget Professor Keith Boadwee and his colonic evacuations? And of course his “explorations of identity politics.” Before anyone bothers to ask the obvious – why - it saves a lot of time if you browse Boadwee’s other paintings, done in a more conventional manner. You’ll notice, quite quickly, they aren’t very good. I mean, at all. And how else is someone who feels he ought to be important going to get noticed? Crap painting won’t do it. But showing off your genitals and making them little dolls might. Though, as you suggest, the real transgression would be for an artist to decline taxpayer subsidy and insist instead on earning his own living. Let’s see if bums squirting paint puts bums on seats.

[Jimmy]

Professor Keith Boadwee and his colonic evacuations?

Damn charlatan. I can't believe this wretched trash is worthy of a position at an institution.

[rjmadden]

showing off your genitals and making them little dolls

I learn something new every time I come here.

[David]

Yes, this blog is a nourishing, indeed vital, intellectual resource.