What is art? Part two

So last night I posed a rhetorical question: what is art?

I was thinking about that question because one of my readers and Twitter pals Christine sent me a link to something that made her roll her eyes. She and I tend to roll our eyes at the same things, so she wanted to share this particular eye roll. Before I get too far ahead of myself, Christine Tweets as @pillowthrowdeco. She's also the pillow maker to the stars and you can see her wares at her Etsy store. If you're north of the 49th parallel, she has a store on iCraft.


Anyhow, she sent me a link to a post written by Casa Sugar a couple of years ago. Now Casa Sugar's a great website and she deserves a lot of credit for spurring the conversation she did in her comments when she ran a poll asking what people thought of this lamp by Philippe Starck.

That was one of four Gun Lamps Philippe Starck designed for Flos a couple of years ago. The comments on Casa Sugar were pretty uniformly horrified by the lamp. And based on their comments, they were missing the point Starck was making with that series. A lot of people thought the lamp was glorifying gun violence. They were also laboring under the mistaken idea that this was some readily-available thing.


I suppose it helps to know who Philippe Starck is. 

Philippe Starck is the 61-year-old enfant terrible of the design world. If René Magritte and Salvador Dalí ever got together and made housewares, the result would be something akin to what comes out of the mind of Philippe Starck.


Philippe Starck is an artist in every sense of the word. I define art as a motive as much as an execution. And in my mind, art is the act of an artist observing and interpreting the world he sees. As he interprets the world, he invites me to see the world as he sees it and at the same time, he challenges me to see it for myself. Ponderous definition I know, but it's taken me years to come up with that and that's as streamlined as I can get it.


Anyhow, Starck turns his artist's eye on the world around him and the result is a tumult of shocking, offensive and as often as not, pretty objects.


Here's a handful of them.

He's also an interior designer and an architect. This is a hotel lobby in Argentina.

Amazing. Now back to the gun lamps that offended so many people on Casa Sugar.


Here's the lamp again.

It's plated in 18 karat gold and on the base, it reads Happiness is a Hot Gun.


The shade is black and there are gold crosses on the inside of the shade.

I smell symbolism at work.


Sure enough, in Starck's own words:

Black as colour of death
Crosses of our dead ones
Gold colour as ambition
War weapons; domestic weapons, bedside, table, living room weapons.
Aux Armes everywhere, as an ending...
Happiness is a hot gun...
My intent was to create objects to remind us that our state of well-being is the result of somebody else dying.

Philippe Starck

Hmmm, that doesn't sound like the glorification of gun violence to me.

These Gun Lamps are intended to be art pieces, clearly. And they're priced as such. Despite the misinterpretations, I can't help but think Monsieur Starck got the reaction he was after precisely.

I think they're hilarious. Brilliant even. I can't see me buying them for me, but I'm sort of glad they're out there.

So. Do these lamps work as art? As illumination? As decor? Or do they fail on all counts?

What is art?

Tomorrow, I want to have a discussion about something and in preparation I'm going to pose a question to think about. What is art? Or more accurately, when is art art and when is it something else.

I don't think this painting by Thomas Kincade is art.

But I do think that this spoof of a Kincade painting by Jim Blanchard is.

So what is art? And when does it become art? When does art stop being a craft and what's the difference?

Piss Christ, 

Andres Serrano, 1986

The question is not whether or not you like something. It's easy to dismiss work I don't like as something other than art. My dislike of the work of Thomas Kincade is not what's underneath my dismissal of his stuff.

Red, Orange, Tan and Purple

Mark Rothko, 1949

Guernica

Pablo Picasso, 1937

Starry Night

Vincent van Gogh, 1889

The Luncheon of the Boating Party

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881

Morning Looking East Over the Hudson Valley from the Catskill Mountains

Frederic E. Church, 1848

Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber

Juan Sánchez Cotán, 1602

Ignudo from the Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo Buonaroti, 1512

Illustration from Li Livres dou Santé by Aldobrandino of Siena 

Artist unknown, late 13th century 

The Barberini Faun

Ancient Greek artist unknown, 300, BCE

So what's art?

The terrible ague

Well it took until February, but I've been felled by the Martian death plague that's been sweeping the land. I haven't been sick in ages and I forgot how rotten this feels. The physical part's bad enough, but this thing has sucked out of me every positive thought in head. All is woe.

But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit.

Act 3, Scene 4
The Life and Death of King John, William Shakespeare

Buy this issue!

My copy of 2010's Mosaic Art Now arrived this morning and I am blown away by it. Nancie Mills-Pipgras, Bill Buckingham and Michael Welch pulled out all the stops and took what was once an arts publication and turned it into a coffee table book. Congratulations on a job well done guys.

Bala by Yakov Hanansen

I wrote an article for this issue and it's a real thrill to see my name in a print publication again. My article is a profile of Yakov and Yulia Hanansen, who are father and daughter as well as being prominent mosaicists. It was a real thrill to meet them and to hear them talk about their art. They are interesting, passionate, talented people and I hope I did them some justice in my profile.

Master Mosaicist Yakov Hanansen looks out at the world from his studio on the 14th floor of an industrial building in Midtown Manhattan. As he works on his latest commission, Yakov is surrounded by 20 years of his own mosaics and they are made brilliant by the morning light streaming through the enormous windows. His work tells the story of an artist committed to defying tradition as he brings both beauty and thought to the world.

And that's all you get. If you'd like to read the rest of that article or any of the other 100 plus pages of this magazine you're going to have to buy a copy. Sorry, but arts organizations need every dime they can get, this year more than any.

Solar Flare by Yulia Hanansen

So buy a copy of 2010's Mosaic Art Now, and then check out the websites of Yulia and Yakov Hanansen.

There's no business like KBIS-ness

From April 16th through the 18th, 2010; the entire kitchen and bath industry will descend on Chicago for our annual trade show and conference. Technically, it's the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show but everyone calls it KBIS. KBIS is the world's largest kitchen and bath show and it draws exhibitors and attendees from all over. As a trade-only event, it's a perfect venue for manufacturers and suppliers to debut their new wares. And debut them they do which is why designers flock to the show every spring.

Somewhere around 700 companies, manufacturers and suppliers show on the floor of KBIS every year and thousands of designers, specifiers, architects, builders and retailers attend. It's also a lot of fun.

KBIS this year is coming with a twist. I'll be there of course but it's a little different for me than it's been in previous years. For starters, I'll be there with press credentials for the first time. So I'll be blogging, Twittering and photographing with giddy abandon. I'll be filing dispatches from the show floor and those dispatches will appear in as many locations as I can get them.

I'm also presenting this year and I need to declare that my airfare, accommodations and a stipend are being covered by Igloo Studios, Inc. Igloo Studios is a software development and training company and I know them through my involvement with Google's SketchUp. Some of the Igloo gang and I will be presenting short SketchUp demonstrations at Kraftmaid's booth.

So if you're going to be at KBIS, please stop and see my SketchUp soft shoe. If you're an industry type who's on the fence about attending, get off the fence already. Come to Chicago! Register here.