I happen to like modern art but there are times that the price of such work leaves my head spinning. That was the case with Carl Andre’s stack of 120 firebricks. In 1966, the Tate Museum was criticized for buying the pile of bricks for $3600. That proved a bargain when another version of the pile of brick was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008 for $1.1 Million. Now, an unmade bed by Tracey Emin has sold for $4.25 million.
It turns out Mom was wrong. You can get somewhere by not cleaning your room. “My Bed” is replete with cigarette butts, crumpled sheets and underwear — enough to drive many mothers perfectly insane (though to could easily imagine my grandmother walking into the museum and making the bed instinctively and finding herself on the hook for millions).
Emin’s 1998 work came in at well over the expected price, though that price was only 1 million pounds below the selling price (which is about $4.25 million above the price most people would have put on the piece).
In fairness, I do find the concept of Emin using her bed and such debris from her life as a type of self portrait to be interesting, but $4.25 interesting? Before the auction, Emin told the press that “I feel quite sad, and I feel that it’s like a fragment of time.” I can understand that but it is amazing what millions of dollars will do for solace in the loss of your unmade bed.
In the meantime, I am going to keep this story away from the kids.
The #1 Paul wrote “part of this type of art is convincing gullible people that if they do not accept it as art they are philistines”
I once dated an artist. She wasn’t bad, talent-wise (no jokes, please), but her mother was really talented: painting, engraving, and drawing. I never could understand how she could admire the paintings which looked like someone paid a 4-year-old to throw paint on a canvas. Her work took days, often weeks, but the other nonsense could have been completed in ten minutes.
@NickS
http://fengshui.about.com/od/love/qt/perfectbedroom.htm
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky Nash
Well, this deserves an Irish Poem!!! Sooo…
Sense of the Woman???
An Irish Poem by
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
There once was a girl with a bed
Who let the thing go to her head.
Her tricks, In Re: SEX
Rated past Triple X!!!
With Feng Shui in the millions she said.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Contrary to popular belief, art is not in the eye of the beholder or the bed-holder (great pun btw)
No, art is in the eye of the marketer.
The majority of “modern art” is the perfect embodiment of The Emperor’s New Clothes.
While the child sees an unmade bed, a painting of random splotches, or a blank canvas. The people who want to be considered cool or hip or to have a deep understanding of man’s struggle with the universe sees a Work of Art.
JD – part of this type of art is convincing gullible people that if they do not accept it as art they are philistines.
Jan Van Eyck must be rolling in his grave.
As the saying goes…
“Beauty is in the eyes of the bed-holder.”
99,
Only if it is a suicide 🙂