As far as I know, Pontius Pilate never asked What is Art?
But it's a question which is now being asked all over the world. And if you go to the very interesting exhibition now at the gallery at Foursquare you are likely to add your voice to the question.For much of our current
civilisation, Art has meant something you might hang on a wall, stand on a pedestal in the garden or the park, or possibly put in a drawing-room cabinet. Art might also include a building (the Arc de Triomphe,
Buckingham Palace) but scarcely the great railway bridge over the Firth of Forth. The Eiffel Tower? Perhaps. At least the tower is useless.Does that make it artistic?
What about the choreography and music of a ballet? Well, yes,
I suppose. What about those colourful bands at Cropover and the subtle music and subtle movements associated with them? Over to you!
Or, in cool, inhibited Japan, the design of a garden of rocks and sand with its harmony of
size and careful placement of rocks and the sensuous, curving rake-marks on the intervening sand?
In California and Berlin a gentleman called Christo
used thousands of yards of plastic sheeting to build an enormous fence across the state, and later to wrap up the Reichstag building like an unlabelled birthday present. Paul Goldberger, in the New Yorker
had no doubt it was Art, saying, of the concealed Reichstag: "billowing silvery fabric turned the haunted once-and-future parliament building into a glowing, soft package and the surrounding open space into an endless street fair.... its magnificence appeared to occasion only joy." I'm inclined to blow a raspberry.
In Pelican Village Adrianna White is showing her cheerful abstracts in which rays radiating from a point are a frequent motif, and where curious shapes of contrasting colour recall Hamlet and Polonius.
HAM: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?/ POL: By the mass and 'tis like a camel , indeed. / HAM: Methinks it is like a weasel./ POL: It is backed like a weasel. / HAM: Or like a whale. / POL: Very like a whale./ LEA: More like a forty-leg , methinks.
Let your imagination riot, as Adrianna's seems to have done, and so enjoyably, too.. Definitely art, and you could hang it on the wall, to puzzle out at leisure. Pity that she's an astrologo-sucker.
The long journey to
Foursquare will be rewarded by amazement and uncertainty as you plunge into a tent filled with variously-occupied bio-coffins on the spotless sand, or dodge among clumps of wet blackish mouths in enamel basins on the floor, on your
way to a triplet tent , the central tent made of childrens' clothes. In each tent you should sit on a notably uncomfortable seat (one being suitably unstable) and listen to the artist's view of the tents and objects.
These
seriously symbolise her m-m-m-moderately m-m-m-mistaken m-m-m-marriage and its so sad and specially significant singularity and severance to separate syllables.You should be able to appreciate the artistic psyche. Leave plenty of
time.
One human-life-size pyramid is decorated by an agreeable female nude, but her backing male confrere is sadly in need of Viagra. Pulling a curtain enables you to see a peepshow of strange objects making a pattern on the
floor, and an underclothed lady appearing and re-appearing on the wall, reminding you of those evenings when Mummy got furious because of the toys you never tidied away properly.
As we drove home I thought of making a replica of
an inguinal hernia repair at its penultimate stage, when I could promote the satisfactions of the Leacock Nylon Darn Technique, particularly suitable for the male Corps de Ballet who so often need to catch leaping ladies whose
jette propulsion may not always be impeccable. Art? Obviously! And it might help me reach personal maturity, through investigating the significance of the green linen drapes.
Mansions which have enough room for these
Mega-Artistic tents must be few, indeed. We must hope for the halls of glittering marble-ised banks, of pillared insurance companies or the echoing emporiums of the acountants.
But I congratulate the organisers, all non-sexist
females, that the exhibition will be bravely travelling to our sister islands.
And to answer my headline's question: Art is what you can get away with.
Penis Score: 1.
