"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls"
Pablo Picasso
"The purpose of modern art is wiping the dust of daily life off our soles"
Anthony Clohesy
Pablo Picasso
"The purpose of modern art is wiping the dust of daily life off our soles"
Anthony Clohesy
I am a maths student, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate good art. I'm as keen as the next man on the works of great and talented painters, for instance, but I am very skeptical about this phenomenon known as Modern Art.
It bothers me that people can rake in thousands of pounds for a painting that I could have done. As Tom Stoppard once said, "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." The real art is getting mugs like my university to pay for these works of tat. In fact, a part of me believes that some of these artists are deliberately making money by clever marketing of paintings that they hate as much as I do.
There's not a lot we commoners can do to combat the headlong descent of museums into the Modern Art world, but each of us can do what comes before us. I, for instance, attend lectures in the maths department of a prestigious UK university which will remain nameless to protect Warwick's reputation. Those Who Waste The Budget have seen fit to shell out thousands of pounds on numerous pieces of 'artwork' to clutter up our walls with. I have taken it upon myself to subtly relabel a few of them:
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Ian Davenport's Everything (Oct 05) |
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Callum Innes' Exposed Painting Zinc Yellow (Oct 06) |
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Keith Coventry's Untitled (Single Roman, Single Luton Fan) (Oct 06) |
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Anonymous' Null and Void (Sister pieces with very little content) (Dec 06) |
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Magic Eye's Dolphins Playing Poker and Walrus at the Opera with Topologists in their Natural Habitat (Jan 07) |
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Derek Southall's Palindrome Shade (Mar 07) |
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Gene Davis' Untitled (Apr 07) |
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Peter Sedgley's Looking Glass Suite (May 07) |
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Victor Vasarely's Planetary Folklore (May 07) |
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The Grand Finale: Due Credit and Recognition (July 07) |
Since the commencement of this project, Warwick have launched a handy website which chronicles many of the various artworks around campus: Warwick Art
