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The mysterious monolith — is it art?
A Weird Monolith is Found in Utah Desert: “It’s probably art” officials say. [And now it’s gone]
That is the headline of a November 24 New York Times story.
Update: now that the ‘mysterious monolith’ has been removed, its conventionality has been revealed. And its lack of depth (in both senses of the word) is about the only surprise. It doesn’t change what I wrote, but it is a nicely wrapped up conclusion. My only question is why leave that single steel triangle?
Updated Update: this is why writing about current news is problematic…now that a number of these have appeared, disappeared, been replaced by wooden crosses or whatever ‘art criticism’ is next, the monolith(s) are becoming a lot less mysterious. They are now political/social/crowd-sourced/interactive/participatory but they are also, ironically, less ‘art’ (in my view) than when originally discovered.
They are now a brawl, and very little of that brawl is artful. They also used to be fun, and funny, but now are simply a headline that won’t go away!
Fortunately, this article isn’t just about the monolith(s) so it is still worth a read!
To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I may not know what art is (or even what is art) but I know it when I see it.” [Stewart was talking about defining pornography, but it seems to work when talking about art.]
Apparently we don’t know when something is art or not…This is definitely art. So why doesn’t everyone get that part right away?
a) People are visually and artistically illiterate
b) All they can think of is 2001: A Space Odyssey
c) It’s more fun to imagine this is an alien probe deep in the earth’s crust
d) They don’t think it’s art because they don’t like it
e) All of the above
It is an unmistakable nod to Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith, that appeared in seemingly Neolithic times, freaking out the monkeys and turning bones into weapons. So doesn’t that put it firmly in the ‘yes, art’ category? Apparently not quite.
