A question that I’ve been turning over in my head for as long as I’ve been studying art history and the philosophy of art is, what is art, anyway? The other day I walked into the breakroom where I work and on the table there was a banana with a spoon balanced on it. I figured the spoon was left there by the person who brought the banana and when I talked to her later she said yes, she’d put the spoon there so people would know she wasn’t giving away the banana. Whenever someone has food they want to get rid, usually cookies or a cake, of they leave it on one of the breakroom tables, although for a while I had a coworker who liked to go through the food in the fridge and take bites out of peoples’ lunches, but that’s another story.
Anyway I thought that if I’d taken a picture of the banana and spoon it would be, well, just a picture, just like the millions of odd ones that people take and upload every day, but if I printed it and framed it the picture would then be art and if I put it in a gallery it could be really expensive art. I didn’t take the picture and now, writing about it, I regret that.
Source: SF MOMA
There’s an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art of twenty-three lost bird posters collected by the artist Rigo 23. I haven’t seen it in person but you can see the works online. Here’s one: I heard about it on an episode of the Bullseye podcast. In the final segment host Jesse Thorn talks about growing up in the area then being forced out by development and rising property prices. The fliers for the lost birds have been preserved but the neighborhood where they were collected is gone. That, and many of the messages, hit me where I live, which is what art should do.
All the elements of this post get me where I live, Chris.
Sometimes I think of my blog as a place where I live, and your comments always improve the neighborhood.