Painters Online Logo

Login/register

Studio

"Art", the play

Welcome to the forum.

Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.

Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.

Hang on Studio Wall
Author
Message
IMG_8857

Marjorie Firth

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 8079
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 2454
Posted
Following on from the post "Art Bollocks", has anyone ever seen the play "Art"? I saw it some years ago and it's on tour again. Excellent. One of three friends buys a painting, a blank white canvas and invites his two friends around for a viewing and to "appreciate" the painting. What ensues is far more than "art bollocks", a can of worms opens up. If you get the chance, go and see it.
profile

Tony Auffret

  • Respected User
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 714
Posted
Haven't seen the play but the idea may have come from the work of Alphonse Allais, who once exhibited a sheet of white paper with the title 'First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls in the Snow' at the 1883 Exposition des Arts Incohérents. The following year he exhibited a piece of red paper 'Apoplectic Cardinals Harvesting Tomatoes on the Shore of the Red Sea (Study of the Aurora Borealis)' and another piece 'Great Sorrows are Silent (Incoherent Funeral March)', though the format of the latter is not known. He wasn't a serious artist and these pieces are, I think, his only known works - but influential enough that a copy of 'First Communion' was shown at the Royal Academy's Post Impressionism exhibition back in 1979/1980. Which is where I came across the work; these descriptions are from the catalogue. Can't help but wonder how he would have eulogised himself if POL was available in those days, Apparently he was better known as a wit and humorist, so no doubt his titles are deliberate Art Bollocks rather than early examples of genuine article.
My Profile pic16

Lewis Cooper

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 6319
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 2578
Posted
I wish you hadn't said all that, Tony. I now feel obliged to abandon my currant oil painting. It's called 'Coal dust on a moonless night, seen through a blindfold.' I was going to enter it for something. All those seconds of agonizing toil and creativity wasted. Ho hum. Lew. (I'm now trying to think of a subject that requires a black background.)
michael

Michael Edwards

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 3863
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 1556
Posted
Lew - anent a suggestion for a dark backgound: a black panther - just add two eyes - or to make it more intriguing simply leave it as it is and call it : Black Panther Asleep At Night.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 24835
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 8655
Posted
Haven't seen the play, but if only we could sell blank white canvases as completed works .... the time it would save! The outlay! The work! And they'd still be better works of art than some I've seen; and now I come to think of it, than some I've painted.......