Saturday, January 5, 2008

Fine, art.

Probably fifteen years ago, I walked into an art museum, and the first painting I saw was an approximately 3 x 6 foot canvas painted solid red. No lines, no designs, no other colors: nothing but red.

It looked a little something like this:


I have long bemoaned the fact that this monochromatic quadrilateral was considered art. Fifteen years later, of all the pieces of artwork I have ever seen in person at a museum, the red parallelogram is the single piece that I remember most vividly and with the greatest emotion.

OK, artist wins.





Credits:
Images on right and left accessed from Wikipedia
Image in middle recreated from memory
Musings about what qualifies as art inspired by Mike

5 comments:

deedma said...

Blog again.

Avery Gray said...

That is an impressive rendering. You have a real future in Photoshop art!

Unbalanced Reaction said...

I love the images. Perhaps I should direct my students to your blog for a lesson in proper citations! :)

watchwhathappens said...

I want a painting of THAT image (the red block in the middle, the "don't touch" sign - the whole thing)

yajeev said...

russ... no doubt i will.

avery and watchwhathappens... thanks. if this blogging gig doesn't work out, i may turn to low-budget graphic design.

unbalanced... in my required grad school "scientific ethics" course, we had to write a paper on how not to plagiarize. i was tempted to copy (without citing) the section out of the MLA handbook on the same topic and conclude with "Don't do this."