Is your bed a work of art?

[Pstotto]

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According to Tracy Emin, your bed is a work of art. What does she mean by this? I think what she is trying to say, is that it's all cosmology, all pain about it, is just a tiny fraction of a massive immensity and not attributable to your self, as some form of personal absolution i.e. your dirt might be a worry regarding other folk's sensibility and yet microbes and flies think of such things as food.

I saw her at Tate Liverpool wondering about the 'messy bed' theatre prop-as-art display, in a quandary about the bed clothes she described as 'wavy.' Presumably the solution is to get into the bed and when you get out of it, having messed around a bit, THIS.IS.IT.: as Frank would say. The problem for the artist is the concept of being identified in some way, with the product.

The inclusive factor, is that it's all part of the visual field and the 5mm of jelly that it's made up of, via data of sense mediation. The fact that one can identify with a square, changes maybe what is there, in other words, as an extension of the false conclusion that 'you are what you eat:' similarly, the media are pushing subliminally with all their computer graphic might, that you are WHAT YOU SEE.

It's not true.

What is true, is that bedding and sheets have pictorial value, so it's inevitable it might look like something and as such, get through the door of believe-ability, regarding what constitutes art.

As a spreading of this iconography of visual perception, for cultural worth; how about filling Tate Modern with everyone's beds? After all, Tracy Emin's bed is a 'bed' and as such, is no more or less a work of art phenomenologically, than everyone else's bed, which she wants to convey, is also a work of art.

The terrible tragedy in London, has left lots of traumatized people with nowhere to go. If the rooms of Tate Modern acquired some new artworks, along the lines of how many of art works of such great value they could display, then these people could be offered the chance to console themselves with a night of sleep in a work of art in an art gallery and that maybe, they too, were a work of art and that life was a work of art, too.

I have a hunch that maybe they don't right now feel like being a work of art sleeping in a work of art and that all life was a work of art.

[Zesty]

Nope.

[LoveCurryPies]

Erin's bed is just a watered down idea of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (1917).

[ElectroClaret]

Charles Saatchi thought Emins bed was. Cos he gave her £150,000 for it in 2000.

Then it was flogged for two and a half million in 2014.

Whatever floats your boat.....

[ThinLizzy]

My fiancee has a painting by a painter. Two actually, but one is a small one. We have interest and posthumously his work has gone up considerably. He was a famous Dutch star in his earlier days. Worth money, serious money. Shows who your friends are. One of her friends tried to buy it on the cheap. We've had it valued at a few thousand Euros minimum. Strange how the 'friend' has backed off. Is it ironic that she worked in a studio that sold contemporary art?! Worth considerably more than what our starting offer for sale was and she baulked. That said. For me, it's crap!

[UpTheBeehole]

My fiancee has a painting by a painter. Two actually, but one is a small one. We have interest and posthumously his work has gone up considerably. He was a famous Dutch star in his earlier days. Worth money, serious money. Shows who your friends are. One of her friends tried to buy it on the cheap. We've had it valued at a few thousand Euros minimum. Strange how the 'friend' has backed off. Is it ironic that she worked in a studio that sold contemporary art?! Worth considerably more than what our starting offer for sale was and she baulked. That said. For me, it's crap!

I read this in the style of Donald Trump

[ThinLizzy]

I read this in the style of Donald Trump

Do you do any other impressions?! My point was it's all pretentious crap! The painting my fiancee has is worth several thousand, yet I wouldn't pay anything for it.

[ClaretEngineer]

No.

But what goes on in my bed could be described as a work of art

[bfcjg]

Nearest mine gets to being a work of art is when I break wind therein, just the F missing.

[Pstotto]

ClaretEngineer gets his body paints out and gently stains the canvas...

[RingoMcCartney]

No.

But what goes on in my bed could be described as a work of art

I've heard of a good source it's called "Portrait of a winker" or summat?

He says don't try n deny it. He has the early preliminary sketches to prove!!

[Pstotto]

I'm of the opinion that my bed is not a work of art and neither is Tracy Emin's and that a human is not a work of art and that we don't live in a work of art or that everything was art. However I do think everything has pictorial value, so it may have similar parallels to art, for example wood grain.

[ClaretEngineer]

I've heard of a good source it's called "Portrait of a winker" or summat?

He says don't try n deny it. He has the early preliminary sketches to prove!!

Moaning Lisa was the final name of the piece.

[RMutt]

If we are talking about Tracy Emin's My Bed, then of course it is art. As LoveCurryPies pointed out, Duchamp established many years ago that found objects or ready mades can be art and My Bed is just such an example. I do not agree it is just a watered down version though. That is like saying an Auerbach or whatever is just a watered down Rembrandt or whatever. I would contend that as a self portrait of someone at a particular point in their life My Bed is more revealing ad honest than many painted 'art ' portraits. My bed isn't a work of art, but then I never intended it be.

[tim_noone]

I leave my bed like a blank canvas on getting out of it when I wake...

[Pstotto]

RMutt, I think you're setting off from the false premise that Duchamp's urinal is a work of art. It isn't a work of art, it's a designed object that has intrinsic pictoriality for being part of the visual field which one interacts with. It's extremely patronizing to an audience to put it in a gallery as if to say 'Look, all objects have an aesthetic function.' As Clint Eastwood said in the movie: "Don't **** down my back and tell me it's raining.'

[Pstotto]

Rauschenberg's 'Bed' is art because he's fashioned it and made art out of it. Emin hasn't done that, there is no art to it. She hasn't rubbed shampoo into the sheets and drawing lipstick on it, she hasn't taken the experience to the level of art and certainly not in relation to Lula's mother in 'Wild at Heart, smothering herself with lipstick and covering herself in puke, as an act of glorious abandonment.

[RMutt]

It's not a false premise. You are getting art and craft mixed up. Art is the ideas bit, craft is the making bit. You can have art without the craft. What about art that is made by someone else, like a symphony or a Renaissance fresco made by pupils?

[Hedontplayforyou]

Mines more like a drip tray

[Pstotto]

You're mixed up in your thinking in such terms regarding the making of a urinal. It's conceived designed and made, but the end product is not a work of art it's a piece of design. Geoff Koons doesn't make his stainless steal balloon dog sculptures, but the result is a work of art. Duchamp's urinal not.

[RMutt]

You are making rules about what constitutes materials and how they should be used in order to make art. Rauschenberg chosen materials were cloth, paint, wood etc. Duchamp's chosen material was a urinal.

[Pstotto]

How has Duchamp made a urinal a work of art? What is the 'art' to it? How is it art? What is it doing? Incidentally, 'you are' is Ad Hominem it's devoid of intellectual content. How about you reply with intellectual content.

[Vino blanco]

We are still talking about Duchamp's urinal one hundred years after it's creation.

[RMutt]

It's doing the same as any other vehicle for contemplative thought. It's challenging you to think about the nature of art. It's saying that if Kandinsky can put some oily colour on on some stretched canvas ( materials) in a way that expresses nothing but his thoughts and ideas and in a way that does not reflect the visual world around him then he can do the same with a urinal.

[RMutt]

You started it with You're.

[ElectroClaret]

How about you get Jeff Koons name right?

You're making this pseudo b0\\0cks up as you go along, pstotto.

[Pstotto]

Of course I am. It's not pre-written. Well if you want to refer to the o.p. go for it, that's the whole point. I doubt whether a misspelling of Jeff Koons name, constitutes a poor judgement of his art work, that's philistinism.

So, an interest in challenging the nature of art, yeah? Well I make that point with the bed and the disaster and Tate Modern, regarding this idea of 'everything is art' which folk think the urinal and Emin's bed is about.

[Pstotto]

if the water supply ran out, folk wouldn't be so hunky dory about getting off on it, as art, methinks.

But of course being conceptual, some might refer to Micheal Craig Martin in their hour of need, when he says that a glass of water is an oak tree. How about a twig down his throat at his next private view? Maybe he might change his mind as to whether a glass of water is an oak tree.

[Rowls]

Pstotto

If we take your distinction between the concepts of 'pictoriality' and 'art' as given, although the distinction remains we can surely still perceive the two concepts in the same way inside our heads? After all if some non-art objects have 'pictoriality' and 'art' has pictoriality too, then they would have a similar effect inside our heads.

And if we follow this, could the original intent of the proposed 'art' come into factor? For example, had Duchamp sculpted and cast the urinal himself to an original design of his own making - had he intended to create a piece of artwork that perfectly resembled a urinal (rather than using an actual urinal) - would that then meet your criteria to classify the piece as 'art'?

[Pstotto]

My general opinion is that the question 'is it art or not?' is secondary to whether whatever I see if of aesthetic or pictorial interest, because I don't need to go into a gallery and be lectured too, about aesthetics. The person who white-washes the window of a shop while it is being re-furbished is making something which usually is of pictorial interest, but I wouldn't class it as a work of art. If I take several photos of it and then collage them in Photoshop into a format then I have made art from what looks like art, but isn't. There was art in-the-making-of the piece. There is also art in-the-presentation-of something, but really it's a simulacrum of art, as a form of art-by-simulation, for example if I took the window out of situ and put it in a gallery with a frame around it, as if putting a frame around it made it art because it had a frame round it. It's a bit like tranvestites dressing up as women, as if you would class them as women and be of sexual interest because they had a dress on and wore make-up. I wouldn't class them as women and would not allow them into the woman's toilets if I were a pub landlord, as they are simulacrums of women and not the real thing.

[Rowls]

But if Duchamp had created his urinal from scratch would that change your opinion of it?

[Pstotto]

One could carve Emin's bed out of marble and say it's a sculpture, but it wouldn't necessarily be any good. If Duchamp had done the same with his urinal, then the question remains as to why it's in a gallery and not in a toilet.

[LoveCurryPies]

It's not a false premise. You are getting art and craft mixed up. Art is the ideas bit, craft is the making bit. You can have art without the craft. What about art that is made by someone else, like a symphony or a Renaissance fresco made by pupils?

I prefer Art to be 50/50 split between idea and craftsmanship. Too many works with little of the latter.

[RMutt]

I sort of agree really. But my argument is that just because a work has little or no craft does not mean it is not art. Pstotto seems to have established some rules for himself, not shared by the rest of the art world I might add, that requires a change to the form or visual aesthetic to qualify. But how much change is enough? For example, the bulls head Picasso made from a saddle and some handlebars might qualify because he has changed the found objects visually into a representation of a bulls head. Duchamp's Fountain does not because it has not been changed enough, the writing added to it, the plinth it is on, it's removal from context are not enough under Pstotto's rules. The danger I see with this approach is that something like a photorealistic painting by Estes with nothing much to say but ' look how good I am at painting' qualifies but Duchamp's ready mades and his philosophical challenge to art, does not.

[Pstotto]

The point of Estes painting is part of exploring world-as-image as a workshop of philosophy, regarding the phenomenology of the experience i.e. painting approximating to the jellied image, the 5mm of jelly that makes up the illusion of the visual field, as a form of trompe l'oiel.

Picasso's bull head sculpture is a signification of a bull's head to the uninitiated, but the wit is how it is part of the big transcendental object illusion of the visual field, in the form of a signification of a bull's head.

One could argue that Duchamp's urinal (although it's not his) has catholic imagery as a hollowed out virgin and child into which you p*ss , but one can imagine wood grain or nicks in the ground as Nike sports emblems, too, in fact any object can be seen as something else, as a result not just of the geometry of perspective but as part of one's library of similar forms or parts of forms. Who is the fool telling the wised up? All children play with objects and imagine them to be something else, the condescension is staggering, so no, for me, the urinal is not art. Jeff Koons and his basket balls in water, has some art in-the-presentation-of, but it's rank really. I have a bike in the shed with my deckchair locked to it, for security, but it's just as valuable a statement in a gallery space as Emin's bed, as a portrait of a man (if I were to put it in a gallery.) If I did that it would be an exhibit and not a work of art, rather like Freud's couch of psychoanalysis. it's not art but it is an exhibit, if it were to be in a white space.

[Pstotto]

If Emin were to say that her exhibit is art, then she'd have to make a differentiation as to what is the 'art' in it and what that means i.e how will the viewer see the world according to any such notion. I see no transformation from personal exhibit to art work.