but is it really art? i mean, come on...
 

i've always considered that question to have been definitively answered/rendered moot/rendered mute in 1917 by r. mutt...

consequently i've always considered to be hopelessly uninformed responses to works of art along the lines of:

"my three year old can paint better than that"
"i could do that"
"that's stupid/pointless/meaningless/just a bunch of random images strung together by a pretentious hack in order to confuse us"
"that's not art, it's just a urinal/blank canvas/bunch of felt/an apple/pile of sand/square piece of plate steel/piece of rope/some broken glass in a box/a shark in fromaldahyde/a tent/a lawn chair/a bunch of canoes/etc/etc"



but then, while taking a photo of this bunch of canoes by nancy rubins, i noticed a long yellow hose running along the wall of the museum...









after looking around for a minute for clues i found this plaque that indicated that the museum had purchased the long yellow hose from a mexican hose salesman in 1996.





... i've never before felt an impulse to immediately dismiss a piece of art as worthless/not art. there's always been something there that i could at least get a critical/interpretive handle on... some real or imagined more or less vague intention towards meaning that i could at least sink my teeth into and then accept or reject on those terms... at least engaging the work before saying that i don't like it/think it's poorly executed/downright idiotic...

but this absolutely refuses to be anything other than simply a hose... is that the point? more duchamp than duchamp? urinal as urinal and not readymade? if so, why is the hose not in use as a hose?


does anyone else "get it"?

I like how the title tells you what it is. Really gets to the heart of the concept.
Yes, I think it is perfectly OK for both the uninformed rube and the sophisticated modern art appreciator to call shenanigans on this particular acquisition.

if i say its art then it is.

I say it is art. Whether it is good art or not is another matter.

Orozco has a tendency to do things like this. His 'Home Run' piece is a good example, where he placed oranges in the windows of a building across the road from the gallery.

His work makes me smile. I quite like it, in a way.

Another one of those subjective concepts that can be endlessly deconstructed until everyone is nauseous and the concept no longer has meaning. And is also trumped by werewolf movies.

i've been studying this question for days now and i have an exam about it in two day so i really REALLY don't feel the need to start discussing it here.

so...this can be a great way to study for you exam...

There are courses for this? I hope you're not paying for this education.

the point of art is that it exists when you call it. whether you like it and whatever merit it carries is something else.

often times with art pieces it can help to look at the context of the original creation and the rest of the artists body of work. As much as there are wonderful paintings which are aesthetically pleasing and very easy to understand, and stand well alone without any need for comparitive pieces or knowledge of art movements.. because their intention is to depict a scene in a certain way.. other pieces like sculpture or instalation art, even some paintings/ers are often more in depth and can require some background knowledge of the artists intentions, especially if they were created years before. I honestly don't consider this a problem when discovering a piece. There are lots of things in this world that contain more than just what is on the surface..

haha oh god.

I wrote a big long reply to this but deleted it because when I read it back all I could see were invisible words saying 'shut up you boring pretentious prick'. In essence though, I agree with Hip Priest on this one.

Funnily enough, I wrote and deleted a long response too, before settling on the thing you agree with.

Splendid.

I personally don't know this artist, but even looking quickly;

"Orozco's exploration of the use of video, drawings, and installations in addition to his photographs and sculptures, allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world. His work permits a rarely allowed interaction between the artwork and the audience."

Seemingly his intention is to break down physical/sociological barriers which can exist between artist work and audience, in a playful manner. I would say such a piece does that quite well. Ordinary objects can be often ignored and considered very humble, and placing items in such a way to give them high cultural significance has been popular since da da, perhaps earlier.

He is asking you to look at the item in a different light. Putting something usually considered quite worthless into a place usually reserved for expensive, exclusive, elitist items. It is quite subtle though, because the item does not have a reserved plinth or space. It's playful.. humorous.. from what I can see. Art does not have to be world changing. Can be, sure, but does not have to in order to be considered art.

We've had a trillion threads where this subject has been touched. Is it art? Personally I don't think it is, then again if you show it in an art gallery apparently it is. I'm more curious about the motivations for defending such works, rather than worrying about my thoughts on them.

You're either an artist, or you're a craftsman.

Also... Everything is art.

Also.. yellow hoses rule.

I'm not sure you should be following the arts if you really consider this an overly difficult piece to comprehend...

I say that in the nicest way possible..

The 'is it art?' question is a hole that I've learned to step over.

Ha! Brilliant.

Like Herrs Rail and Priest, I wrote a massive reply that I deleted, but I think phoenix has about got the measure above.

i study illustration and we get a few theory classes on art history, basic philosophy, anthropology and art philosophy. what we do in this last class is look at different views on the subject of art and what defines art, what different types of people call 'art' etcetera etcetera. it's actually quite interesting to discuss, and i'm enjoying this part of my education as well as the rest.

art = intent + execution

if you took the subject you're studying for this exam and then stretched it out for three years during which it is implied that your own art work is a footnote to the aforementioned discussion then you would be studying at a prestigious english art school.

i thought that duchamp's urinal was meant as more of a two fingers up to the artworld rather than as the opener to some kind endless circular arguement about what is and isn't art thus opening the door to worthless twats like gabriel orozco, rikrit tiravanjica, jeff koons and that prick who puts piles of sweets in a corner because his boyfriend died of AIDS

I love this. I'm going to call it the Merzboat.

Everything Is Art, Darlings. When the wind blows the leaves of a tree, that is Art. Art is anything that causes a reaction. Art is everywhere, everpresent.

The replies here are pretty interesting.
I gotta say though, that sometimes pieces like this just make me wonder that so many folks are trying so hard to capture and claim everything great and small in this world, from naming stars to copyrighting phrases. Things like this make me more think that it's about owning stuff, even hoses.

What phoenix wrote in post 10.

Don't knock it, it's a way of life (Albeit a futile one). I'm half way through a degree in Fine Art now, and I've got to mention here that rarely, if at all, has the question "is it art?" come up. I have no memory of posing or being posed that question. Mainly I think because the "is it art?" question is just a massive cop-out on behalf of the viewer. If something isn't art, it doesn't cease to exist, it's still a THING, and a thing you've got to deal with, or as the case may be, not. The word "art" isn't there to separate things that aren't worthy of you attention from those that are. I'd say about 20% or even less of the officially-certified-by-the-mysterious-afficionados-on-this-subject art is even worthy of the faintest smidgeon of my attention.

All Art Is Pornography

we rarely argue about it because what we do in the graphic design/illustration department is not really considered art: our work usually has a function, and even if it's a free assignment, we tend to tell stories. we learn how to work around a theme, in funcion of a subject, for someone, and with limitations, but still make it something creative and recognisable as our own work. a lot of students make quite conceptual graphic design that is similar to conceptual art anyway. i remember a guy who midified a photobooth so it would cut up different pictures of people who'd sit in it and create a video with them, it was his final project for graphic design.

i do this because i love to tell a story in my work, and i love how it can reach people. lately i've been doing some actions in public, mostly with my boyfriend, also related to another interesting question: can art change the world? we've been debating about this, and came to a conclusion that what is seen as 'high art' can give a nice impulse to the public to actually make a change, but its main problem is that it only reaches a very small part of the world. here in antwerp an artist/theatre maker has spent all year doing small actions to disturb daily routines in antwerp and open eyes, this worked for some people (he has a rather large fanbase now) but most people don't know about it or don't know the meaning of what he does. that is why the world needs these 'popular' artists giving out a message, even though they're not considered 'high art'

me and my friends love bringing unfamiliar elements into the street, we even keep it quite legal. in the summer we went around at night making chalk drawings that pointed small funny things out that would have been gone unnoticed, or posting little notes between announcements and posters on walls or in mailboxes. right now we're working on a set of poster prints to hang on shop windows. they say things like 'very small man is looking for very small woman' and then we post them low to the floor. they're meant to surprise people and make them smile.

i realise this isn't very related but yeah.

Ploesj these interventions or actions of yours sound lovely. You probably already know about her, but be sure to check out VALIE EXPORT, though, she was a bit all-guns-blazing about it, for more subtle interventions like your own, I highly reccomend you check out Jiri Kovanda.

Can you send me link to the artist that's doing the actions to disturb daily routines in Antwerp, I'm intruiged.

I know what you mean n'all, but this phrase really made me laugh :o

I've got an art degree from St Martins, I'm entitled to knock it, because it was a bag of shite

hey-lo, I wus ches wonderink eef chu wood like to buy dees peenk hose I gots.

haha yeah me too, i re-read it and just giggled.

http://www.kalender09.be/kalnder/index.php?pages/index

here is the link, the project was called 'calendar 09'. the site is full of pictures and texts about the actions.

Yeah it looks like a hose to me. I have that hose. Wonder if mine is worth as much.

Art is a nebulous term.
If everything is art then nothing is art.
a hose is not art. putting a hose on the ground and labeling it as an art piece does not make it art. it makes it a joke. the joke is on anyone who would consider such a stupid thing to be art.

if a hose on the ground speaks to you then you gots some issues.

Art is money.

it certainly attracts a lot of wankers

I don't believe this is true. In this universal kind of sense, I think of it as related to yet distinct from science. Just as everything is quantifiable, everything is qualifiable.