Francisco and I went to an exhibit of Jeremy Deller's work at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis (a very small museum in midtown). Deller is British, which is the angle I used on Francisco to get him to go (he's not a big contemporary art fan). Deller stages events, like a procession in Manchester and a historical reenactment of a British miners' strike in the 80s, which he also filmed. The reenactment was abrasive--the film showed cops with plastic shields beating protestors (when I think of reenactments, I think of events that happened so long ago as to be detached and romanticized--not so with the miners' strike reenactment).
(The pictures here are from an exhibit he held in his parent's house about 10 years ago.)
The impression that I got about him from the exhibit is that he is a political revolutionary who loves British music, especially Manchester bands, and probably drugs. It doesn't seem like an unusual type.
One piece of artwork was a collection of witty things that were written on the bathroom wall at (I think) the British Library. Another followed the idea of "twinning cities" by making a map of Iraq with the names of American towns and vice versa.
Conceptual art is fascinating to me, but I don't find it to be beautiful.
2 comments:
I remember one conceptual art exhibit which I saw with a friend years ago -- I can't remember who the artist was, but the centerpiece was a television playing an endless loop of a congresswoman giving a speech denouncing Richard Nixon during which she uttered the phrase: "They have misbehaved! They have behaved amiss!" We found it entertaining but I'm not sure if the artist intended it that way.
As for this exhibit, it does look interesting. Sadly, the thing that really jumped out at me was how atypically clean that bedroom was!
Ha--true. He's not the sort of guy you think of as having a clean room.
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