8 ms·

Am I the only one who looks at this massive installations and views them as a massive waste of resources and intentional littering? These are multi-ton plastic

by anm89 6y ago

Am I the only one who looks at this massive installations and views them as a massive waste of resources and intentional littering? These are multi-ton plastic monuments to some guys ego. Certainly not celebrating his death, he seems like a nice, interesting guy but it's hard for me to get behind the work.

sp332 6y ago
It's not really littering if it gets cleaned up later.
- anewdirection 6y ago
  Except there are at least 3 posts here about finding the discarded fabric laying around. Most seems to have been repurposed, but the lack of having any use for it afterward seems a gross oversight. We are splitting hairs here, so I should acknowledge while it is not littering, it is still preponderously wasteful and short-sighted.
ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
It's uncharitable to diminish someone's art to just ego, feels sadly cynical. Our problem with pollution is systemic, what he's done is a drop in the bucket. Certainly we can't all afford to do it but to have one artist do it and for his pieces to achieve worldwide recognition I'd say it was demonstrably valuable to people.
seumars 6y ago
Thanks for reminding me to never read comments about art on this website again.
- antonvs 6y ago
  Or read them, to remind oneself what a narrow perspective on the world one gets here. It's a bit like reading comments about technology from politicians. Although come to think of it, "The internet is a series of tubes" is actually probably more accurate.
mc32 6y ago
There are lots of things that are kind of wasteful. Parades, lots of art, celebrations, pro sports, etc. it’s part of life. Some people enjoy austerity and austere lives. That’s okay, but many people like to enjoy life with a little more vibrance that can produce “unnecessary” waste.
serf 6y ago
>These are multi-ton plastic monuments to some guys ego. i've found that part of appreciating art is separating the aesthetic value from the worldly reasoning. in other words : lots of art can be viewed as a waste of resources -- there is no intrinsic value other than what others assign to it. The (real) non-monetary value lies in the interpretation and aesthetic value the art itself achieves, not in the comparison and measure of how efficiently it achieved that aesthetic versus currency spent. Foil wrapped buildings and waterways that many can walk across are aesthetically interesting in our society because those particular views are rare or non-existent. Other-worldly. The value is in the novelty of having the opportunity to see something totally unlike the known world that you've already experienced. After all that : art is still subjective. Maybe his works just won't ever click for you -- that's okay. Support the art that you might enjoy in the future by supporting artists as a valid work of life as a whole, regardless of ones' tastes.
- wetmore 6y ago
  Your comment put into words my thoughts on the matter which I was having trouble articulating, thanks!
tomtomtom777 6y ago
Yes and no. Art isn't useless, and usefulness is highly subjective. No matter how sustainable we attempt to behave we cannot distinguish pleasures from necessities in a meaningful way. Then again, even if the footprint of art in its entirety is rather small, this doesn't absolve artists from the same responsibility we all share. A responsibility you rightfully point out, not apparent in Christo's art. Then again, most of his work is from decades ago when the urgency of sustainability wasn't as obvious as it is now. I don't think he deserves being remembered for wastefulness.
sergiotapia 6y ago
All of this "modern art" is just terrible and not soothing to the soul. They create these installations to "elicit a response" from viewers, but any talentless hack can do that. It's not art. There's a movement to return to traditional art and architecture. It's amazing, but I can't seem to the recall the name of the organization. They had beautiful paintings made by artists in the traditional art style.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Traditional art and architecture never went away. Some people have continued to follow traditional styles in every form of art, regardless of what the current vogue is. Sometimes people’s estimation of the impact of modernism is very distorted, as when some claim that classical music in the 20th century became all dissonance and ugliness, but if you actually add up composers around the world in the 20th century, you find that most of them were writing traditional tonal music, and modernists were a minority that in many places could hardly get any performances. Usually organizations that call for a "return to traditional art" are ostensibly simply seeking to boost the visibility of traditional styles. But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely. That seems very rude to that set of people out there (however small or large) who do enjoy avant-garde or modernist art, and who feel their lives would be poorer without it.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    "But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely." Not only that, but they often seem to be engaged in a larger cultural war where making art great again is just one front.
    - kthxbye123 6y ago
      Just to not mince words: many of them are white supremacists and cultural chauvinists. Tweet a picture of old town Sarajevo or the Alhambra at one of those “traditional European architecture” twitter accounts and see how they respond.
dntbnmpls 6y ago
A lot of people agree with you. He had an exhibit in central park a while ago and most people I knew thought it was a pure waste of time and resources. Only a few who were in art school at the time cared about it. They even volunteered to help build it. Since then, I haven't heard another mention of christo, the central park exhibit or anything related to that by anyone. So makes me wonder what the point of it was. But if it made some happy then so be it.
robbrown451 6y ago
I see it the same, but I recognize it is going to annoy a lot of people to say so out loud. Warning: cynicism ahead. A lot of art seems about being in the "in group", so you can show your sophistication by appreciating things that others don't get. It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DsGleQsaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DsGleQsaU ) I'll give him this, I admire the fact that he was able to convince someone somewhere to give him the money to do these things. But I'm sure there are a huge number of artists that would do more interesting things with the kind of resources these things take. To me they are from the school of art that says that the more audacious and obnoxious something is, the better. The goal seems to be to get people to think about the question "what is art?", which to me is a rather boring semantic question that I don't want to waste a lot of time thinking about. Sorry. Honestly, I'd have a lot more appreciation of this sort stuff if those who put it out there presented it with a bit of an evil grin, rather than with an air of smugness and pretension.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  I haven't seen any of his works in person, but anybody I know who has seen one was impressed. More than by the pictures. Even the folks from outside "artist circles"
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise. As a fan of certain avant-garde music, I've talked with a fair few fellow concertgoers about what their "origin story" is, how they got into this music that appeals only to a niche. It never had to do with discovering a community of fans and wanting to fit in with them – discovering like-minded people only happened later. Rather, the exposure to the avant-garde music was something random. Often it was seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey and being bowled over by the György Ligeti pieces in the score. In my own case, I owe my discovery of this music to listening to one of the new-arrivals CDs in the classical-music section of my local record shop (remember CDs and listening booths?). What I heard made me hooked for life, and it was some years before I ever discovered any kind of group that I could even be in with. The same is true of visual art. Vastly more people like Vasarely or Bacon because they stumbled upon one of those Taschen volumes in a bookshop, than hang out in art-gallery circles and actually talk to other art lovers. So excuse me if I take offense at your post, which seems to dismiss music that authentically gives us pleasure (and initially a purely solitary pleasure) by tarring us fans as disingenous frauds or peacocks. There is almost always someone who posts the same thing as you in these kind of discussions, and it never ceases to disappoint me.
g8tor 6y ago
You're not alone. Many people share that view. You're right from your perspective. Taking a step outside that view for a minute, I think part of the appeal of environmentally focused value systems is it allows you a trump card what stands above all else with moral supremacy. Once you've made a pronouncement nothing can usurp it and you don't ever need to back down. Because within that morally focused environmental value system environmental considerations trump everything else. In short it's a way to be absolutely right which is very attractive and a lot of people subscribe to it. Standing above others is a very satisfying place to be. Funnily enough, I think that's part of what Christo's work explores. In taking these grand monuments and covering them up he is sort of posing the question that something else can stand above them. Perhaps our projections? From that point of view I think you can consider his work as a monument to the the collective ego we put into our own pronouncements upon things. Which is pretty cool. Art can do that.
wwarner 6y ago
We've been at it for 35000 years. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/only-handful-people-can-enter-chauvet-cave-each-year-our-reporter-was-one-them-180954981/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/only-handful-peo...
slim 6y ago
if you had to wrap a building in fabric, how would you do? you could marvel at the logistics involved. the precious know-how of the artist. imagine walking in the same street everyday and suddenly discover that the parliament building is wrapped in tin foil. maybe that sighting would have had a permanent impact on how you view things. maybe that happened to thousands of passersby that week.
rjvs 6y ago
Do you feel the same way about Marvel movies, or TV and movies in general? Honest question because especially the blockbusters likely produce more waste, although less visibly and certainly consume more resources.
- mikl 6y ago
  At least people are willing to pay for that stuff with their own money, instead of having it imposed on them.
  - morelisp 6y ago
    The difference between an art grant and a tax credit (which Marvel/Disney have got plenty of) doesn't feel especially material to me at that scale. The resulting artwork is also accessible to everyone.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    >Arts investment contributes up to £4 to the local economy for every £1 spent, according to a new report published by the Local Government Association (LGA). https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/01042013-arts-contribute-28bn-to-economy https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/0104...
carapace 6y ago
Some people might say the same of Burning Man. (Not me, of course, but some people.) What about Stonehenge or the Pyramids or Göbekli Tepe? I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like the kind of thing people just do sometimes.
bitL 6y ago
He was doing Augmented Reality before it was popular.
0lpbm 6y ago
I visited the installation "Big Air Package" in Germany a while back. And it was transformative. The installation consists of a canvas "balloon" inside an old, desafected gasometer. The public can visit the interior and the exterior. At that time, I remember quipping to myself that it was a cathedral for the non-believers. The peace and tranquility of its "inside" space lending it spiritual properties. But yes, it was just an industrial amount of canvas and rope that they had to landfill somewhere.
Fricken 6y ago
I have a house, a car, clothes, and food. All these things serve an important utilitarian function, but I've spent gratuitously more than I need to on embellishments to the aesthetic value of these utilitarian things. Most people do the same. The only thing that distinguishes Art is that it doesn't posture as having some kind of underlying practical utility.

by anm89 6y ago

sp332 6y ago

It's not really littering if it gets cleaned up later.

anewdirection 6y ago
Except there are at least 3 posts here about finding the discarded fabric laying around. Most seems to have been repurposed, but the lack of having any use for it afterward seems a gross oversight. We are splitting hairs here, so I should acknowledge while it is not littering, it is still preponderously wasteful and short-sighted.

ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago

It's uncharitable to diminish someone's art to just ego, feels sadly cynical. Our problem with pollution is systemic, what he's done is a drop in the bucket. Certainly we can't all afford to do it but to have one artist do it and for his pieces to achieve worldwide recognition I'd say it was demonstrably valuable to people.

seumars 6y ago

Thanks for reminding me to never read comments about art on this website again.

antonvs 6y ago
Or read them, to remind oneself what a narrow perspective on the world one gets here. It's a bit like reading comments about technology from politicians. Although come to think of it, "The internet is a series of tubes" is actually probably more accurate.

mc32 6y ago

There are lots of things that are kind of wasteful. Parades, lots of art, celebrations, pro sports, etc. it’s part of life. Some people enjoy austerity and austere lives. That’s okay, but many people like to enjoy life with a little more vibrance that can produce “unnecessary” waste.

serf 6y ago

>These are multi-ton plastic monuments to some guys ego. i've found that part of appreciating art is separating the aesthetic value from the worldly reasoning. in other words : lots of art can be viewed as a waste of resources -- there is no intrinsic value other than what others assign to it. The (real) non-monetary value lies in the interpretation and aesthetic value the art itself achieves, not in the comparison and measure of how efficiently it achieved that aesthetic versus currency spent. Foil wrapped buildings and waterways that many can walk across are aesthetically interesting in our society because those particular views are rare or non-existent. Other-worldly. The value is in the novelty of having the opportunity to see something totally unlike the known world that you've already experienced. After all that : art is still subjective. Maybe his works just won't ever click for you -- that's okay. Support the art that you might enjoy in the future by supporting artists as a valid work of life as a whole, regardless of ones' tastes.

wetmore 6y ago
Your comment put into words my thoughts on the matter which I was having trouble articulating, thanks!

tomtomtom777 6y ago

Yes and no. Art isn't useless, and usefulness is highly subjective. No matter how sustainable we attempt to behave we cannot distinguish pleasures from necessities in a meaningful way. Then again, even if the footprint of art in its entirety is rather small, this doesn't absolve artists from the same responsibility we all share. A responsibility you rightfully point out, not apparent in Christo's art. Then again, most of his work is from decades ago when the urgency of sustainability wasn't as obvious as it is now. I don't think he deserves being remembered for wastefulness.

sergiotapia 6y ago

All of this "modern art" is just terrible and not soothing to the soul. They create these installations to "elicit a response" from viewers, but any talentless hack can do that. It's not art. There's a movement to return to traditional art and architecture. It's amazing, but I can't seem to the recall the name of the organization. They had beautiful paintings made by artists in the traditional art style.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Traditional art and architecture never went away. Some people have continued to follow traditional styles in every form of art, regardless of what the current vogue is. Sometimes people’s estimation of the impact of modernism is very distorted, as when some claim that classical music in the 20th century became all dissonance and ugliness, but if you actually add up composers around the world in the 20th century, you find that most of them were writing traditional tonal music, and modernists were a minority that in many places could hardly get any performances. Usually organizations that call for a "return to traditional art" are ostensibly simply seeking to boost the visibility of traditional styles. But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely. That seems very rude to that set of people out there (however small or large) who do enjoy avant-garde or modernist art, and who feel their lives would be poorer without it.
- pavlov 6y ago
  "But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely." Not only that, but they often seem to be engaged in a larger cultural war where making art great again is just one front.
  - kthxbye123 6y ago
    Just to not mince words: many of them are white supremacists and cultural chauvinists. Tweet a picture of old town Sarajevo or the Alhambra at one of those “traditional European architecture” twitter accounts and see how they respond.

dntbnmpls 6y ago

A lot of people agree with you. He had an exhibit in central park a while ago and most people I knew thought it was a pure waste of time and resources. Only a few who were in art school at the time cared about it. They even volunteered to help build it. Since then, I haven't heard another mention of christo, the central park exhibit or anything related to that by anyone. So makes me wonder what the point of it was. But if it made some happy then so be it.

robbrown451 6y ago

I see it the same, but I recognize it is going to annoy a lot of people to say so out loud. Warning: cynicism ahead. A lot of art seems about being in the "in group", so you can show your sophistication by appreciating things that others don't get. It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DsGleQsaU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DsGleQsaU ) I'll give him this, I admire the fact that he was able to convince someone somewhere to give him the money to do these things. But I'm sure there are a huge number of artists that would do more interesting things with the kind of resources these things take. To me they are from the school of art that says that the more audacious and obnoxious something is, the better. The goal seems to be to get people to think about the question "what is art?", which to me is a rather boring semantic question that I don't want to waste a lot of time thinking about. Sorry. Honestly, I'd have a lot more appreciation of this sort stuff if those who put it out there presented it with a bit of an evil grin, rather than with an air of smugness and pretension.

johannes1234321 6y ago
I haven't seen any of his works in person, but anybody I know who has seen one was impressed. More than by the pictures. Even the folks from outside "artist circles"
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise. As a fan of certain avant-garde music, I've talked with a fair few fellow concertgoers about what their "origin story" is, how they got into this music that appeals only to a niche. It never had to do with discovering a community of fans and wanting to fit in with them – discovering like-minded people only happened later. Rather, the exposure to the avant-garde music was something random. Often it was seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey and being bowled over by the György Ligeti pieces in the score. In my own case, I owe my discovery of this music to listening to one of the new-arrivals CDs in the classical-music section of my local record shop (remember CDs and listening booths?). What I heard made me hooked for life, and it was some years before I ever discovered any kind of group that I could even be in with. The same is true of visual art. Vastly more people like Vasarely or Bacon because they stumbled upon one of those Taschen volumes in a bookshop, than hang out in art-gallery circles and actually talk to other art lovers. So excuse me if I take offense at your post, which seems to dismiss music that authentically gives us pleasure (and initially a purely solitary pleasure) by tarring us fans as disingenous frauds or peacocks. There is almost always someone who posts the same thing as you in these kind of discussions, and it never ceases to disappoint me.

g8tor 6y ago

You're not alone. Many people share that view. You're right from your perspective. Taking a step outside that view for a minute, I think part of the appeal of environmentally focused value systems is it allows you a trump card what stands above all else with moral supremacy. Once you've made a pronouncement nothing can usurp it and you don't ever need to back down. Because within that morally focused environmental value system environmental considerations trump everything else. In short it's a way to be absolutely right which is very attractive and a lot of people subscribe to it. Standing above others is a very satisfying place to be. Funnily enough, I think that's part of what Christo's work explores. In taking these grand monuments and covering them up he is sort of posing the question that something else can stand above them. Perhaps our projections? From that point of view I think you can consider his work as a monument to the the collective ego we put into our own pronouncements upon things. Which is pretty cool. Art can do that.

wwarner 6y ago

We've been at it for 35000 years. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/only-handful-people-can-enter-chauvet-cave-each-year-our-reporter-was-one-them-180954981/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/only-handful-peo...

slim 6y ago

if you had to wrap a building in fabric, how would you do? you could marvel at the logistics involved. the precious know-how of the artist. imagine walking in the same street everyday and suddenly discover that the parliament building is wrapped in tin foil. maybe that sighting would have had a permanent impact on how you view things. maybe that happened to thousands of passersby that week.

rjvs 6y ago

Do you feel the same way about Marvel movies, or TV and movies in general? Honest question because especially the blockbusters likely produce more waste, although less visibly and certainly consume more resources.

mikl 6y ago
At least people are willing to pay for that stuff with their own money, instead of having it imposed on them.
- morelisp 6y ago
  The difference between an art grant and a tax credit (which Marvel/Disney have got plenty of) doesn't feel especially material to me at that scale. The resulting artwork is also accessible to everyone.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >Arts investment contributes up to £4 to the local economy for every £1 spent, according to a new report published by the Local Government Association (LGA). https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/01042013-arts-contribute-28bn-to-economy https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/0104...

carapace 6y ago

Some people might say the same of Burning Man. (Not me, of course, but some people.) What about Stonehenge or the Pyramids or Göbekli Tepe? I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like the kind of thing people just do sometimes.

bitL 6y ago

He was doing Augmented Reality before it was popular.

0lpbm 6y ago

I visited the installation "Big Air Package" in Germany a while back. And it was transformative. The installation consists of a canvas "balloon" inside an old, desafected gasometer. The public can visit the interior and the exterior. At that time, I remember quipping to myself that it was a cathedral for the non-believers. The peace and tranquility of its "inside" space lending it spiritual properties. But yes, it was just an industrial amount of canvas and rope that they had to landfill somewhere.

Fricken 6y ago

I have a house, a car, clothes, and food. All these things serve an important utilitarian function, but I've spent gratuitously more than I need to on embellishments to the aesthetic value of these utilitarian things. Most people do the same. The only thing that distinguishes Art is that it doesn't posture as having some kind of underlying practical utility.