Junk Art Installation - Outrage As New Janitor at Boson Museum of Find Art Tidies Up 'Unmade bed' Feminist Masterpiece
A 'Feminist Masterpiece' has been desecrated by a rookie night janitor at the Museum of Find Art. Thursday evening, 14 May 2020. Working through the various rooms at the museum the neophyte cleaner say mess and cleaned it up. He thought the 'conception art' was the leftover of someone's party while the museum was closed.
Art lovers across the city were outraged and called for more training for museum staff in art appreciation. Of particular ire was the fact that the empty liquor bottles were thrown in the recycle bin and the beer cans were redeemed for the nickel deposit.
The artist, who is an ardent feminist, was defended by women's rights advocates. The work was intended to remind the viewer that it is mostly women who are forced by the patriarchy to make beds. She awoke one morning in her bedroom and was visited by the muse.
"Suddenly I had this vision of taking it out of the bedroom space and putting it into a white gallery space," she said. "It suddenly made sense," she said. "Wow this is fantastic artwork."
City Councilor President Ema Strickland, who is an open Lesbian, condemned the violation of the artists work as "an attack on all women."
"It is hard for many feminists to understand how an untrained janitor is allowed to attack priceless works of art in a museum," the visibly angry Strickland said. "Why is it that the only work of art desecrated was one created by a woman? Just an accident? How convenient."
"I am introducing a bill to the city council on Monday, 18 May 2020, to require the museum to hold art appreciation classes with an emphasis on women artists importance for all museum 'new-hires' since the museum gets funding from the city," Councilor Strickland said. She is running for mayor against incumbent Boson Mayor Welsh in November.
An art professor at UMass Boson sent a link to a working definition of 'conceptual art.'
'In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair'.
So if the 'art' is the idea, what does this mean for the 'value'? There is no definitive answer for this, and the value attributed to a piece is extremely subjective.
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It could be in the influence of the work and it's importance both in the history of art and the history of society. It could be in it's rejection of consumerism or other debated concepts. Maybe it's in it's originality.
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Mayor Welsh countered the 'conceptual art' boosters. "Modern, or “conceptual art” isn’t art at all. It’s one big circle jerk of pretentious twats trying to make themselves look sophisticated by ascribing meaning to something that’s completely meaningless… Why is it that the most talent-less and vacuous stuff gets promoted by the art establishment? Well, it’s partly born out of elitism. If the artistic merit of a bunch of squiggly lines can only be appreciated by a select number of privileged insiders they can sneer at the uninitiated, and justify their own intellectual superiority.
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Fortunately the new janitor did not make it to the pile of candy against a wall in the "Blue Room."
The irony is that the conceptual art movement actually set out to challenge the art institutions. Artists began creating work which couldn't be sold - that didn't conform to the rigid definitions of 'good art'. It was an anti-capitalist, avant-garde movement which marked a complete and utter break with orthodox traditions.
The story has a happy ending. The rookie cleaner was asked to spend the night in the bed an leave the covers tangled and the bed unmade after he got up. He was allowed to finish off a couple of bottles of liquor as long as he promised to leave the bottles on the floor next to the work of art. The used condoms, soiled underpants, and bloody tampons that were a part of the original instillation will be replaced by the artist.
The work was previously shown at London's Tate Museum before being auctioned by Christies for $4,000,000.00 in 2014.
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