How Can We Know if it’s Artistic or “Shitistic”?
Art Review
What would you do if you were sitting next to the sculpture shown above? If it was prominently displayed in the living room of someone you love, and you knew that it must have cost something, would you cut it some slack?
The rest of the apartment is filled with beautiful, interesting, and thought-provoking pieces (although this brownish-pink lump is the one I’m thinking most about).
We’ve circled this baby over the years, looking for a resemblance to a person trudging to work, perhaps carrying a large sack over his shoulder. Or we see someone bent over, tying his shoe, but it can’t be a human torso because of the section, much like the horizontal line that connects the letter “H,” that links what could have been two heavy, mottled thighs.
From across the room, the sculpture appears to be brown, but on closer inspection, pink, red, and orange layers come through. Not that it makes it any more cheerful, but it’s also shiny, like the leaves of a begonia. And the texture is stippled, not smooth.
I’m not going to publicize my distaste or anything (because I’m not qualified to form an opinion about art) but I question the artist, imagining him (because it’s probably not the work of a woman — there’s no emotion, no story, no feelings here) bent over this stone or plaster of Paris (Who knows? Again, I have no training in art criticism).
Is the sculpture trying to reveal something about human nature? Is the artist getting older, imagining himself as a bent-over alte-kocker (literal translation: old fart), defined purely by his need to eat and defecate? After the artist finished the final dappled brown layer, did he circle the sculpture and decide that adding shine was the final needed touch? What about adding a human characteristic (maybe a nose?) or anything that would hint at the story behind the art (perhaps a hand resting on what might be seen as a shoulder?)
The sculpture is next to the table where I’m writing, and I keep glancing at it, occasionally getting up to look at the back, where a petrified wood leg (or so it appears) forms a third support. Is it a walking stick or does it represent poop?
This sculpture reminds me of when my youngest, at about age three, used to break into giggles hearing or talking about bodily noises and functions. We played rhyming games, and they usually included words like scoop, tea, and wiper. What else did he know about the world? Maybe that’s the message of this piece of art — that the human body, though magnificent in many aspects, boils down to and produces nothing but excrement.
But, as I mentioned previously, I’m not an artist or a critic, so what do I know?
