Thursday 24 July 2008

A Dead Shark Isn't Art

Eddie Saunders' Stuffed SharkA dead shark isn't art? That's fighting talk if you're a brainwashed moron! The Stuckism website has posted the saga of Eddie Saunders' stuffed shark, the forerunner ... er ... foreswimmer of Moneybags Hirst's rotting carcass. (At least, it was rotting the last I heard of it.) The shark's tale is published in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson, Aurum Press Ltd 2008. Click the title link to read more on the economics of shark stuffing.

2 Comments:

At 24/7/08, Blogger lennardg said...

Hmm, it's something about the context the object appears in (Gallery/ museum) not the object itself (stuffed shark) isn't it?...the Duchamp thing and all that.

 
At 24/7/08, Blogger Unknown said...

Hi, Lennard

If anything that goes into a gallery is art, then we've got to count security guards and the caretaker's cat as art!

I think it's more about arrogance than context. Duchamp's attitude, echoed by Tracy Emin, was "If I call it art, it is art". Imagine a cowboy plumber getting away with that nonsense: "If I call it plumbing, it is plumbing"!

 

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