ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO… DISPATCHES ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO…
DISPATCHES
OUT OF THIS WORLD?:
MARTIAN ART
In the first essay of his book
Kant after Duchamp (1998),
art historian Thierry de Duve
employs an ingenious conceit
that puts him in the place
of Martians landing on earth
and trying to make sense
of this thing we call ‘art’.
Assuming – with respectful
apologies – that Martians turning, and to impose on
aren’t creatives, what would contemporary art the concepts
they make of it? that anthropologists have
employed to sift the cultures
The conceit enables de Duve of non-Western peoples. Hence
to reconsider what happened Barbara Hepworth’s Icon
to the category of art when (1957) finds itself labelled
Duchamp authored his urinal, a ‘tool of communication’;
Fountain, in 1917. But Scott King’s Pink Cher, his
curators at the Barbican have 2002 reinterpretation of
given the idea marvellously Alberto Korda’s Che Guevara
literal life, and this month icon, falls into the category
are using the work of more ‘magic and belief’; and Jay
than 80 contemporary artists Heikes’s Family Tree (2003),
to furnish The Martian Museum an upturned tree hung with
of Terrestrial art. In part sports jackets, is interpreted
the show addresses de Duve’s as an emblem of ‘kinship and
ideas, and includes restagings descent’. Some of the show’s
of Duchamp’s gesture, such turns are just plain comic,
as Sherrie Levine’s golden but many more clear away the
Fountain 5 (1996). But the stuff of style and history
idea has also inspired them to from our impression
effect some ingenious table- of contemporary art to put
forth a refreshed picture
of its reigning ideas.
Morgan Falconer
The MarTIan MuseuM oF
TerresTrIal arT, 6 MARCH
– 18 MAy, BARBICAN
Scott King, Pink Cher, 2002.
ART GALLERy, LONDON
Courtesy Herald St, London WWW.BARBICAN.ORG.UK
37 ArTrEvIEw
Dispatches_March.indd 37 4/2/08 11:12:29
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