What do Salvatore Garau and Yves Klein have in common? Or perhaps a better question might be...who are Salvatore Garau and Yves Klein? The picture below gives a hint.
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| Nothing to see here, folks! |
Salvatore Garau and Yves Klein are both artists. Salvatore Garau was born in Santa Giusta, Italy in 1953. He achieved notoriety last summer for selling a sculpture for almost 20 thousand dollars. While this might not sound like a big achievement (Wannaskan Almanac writers often spend far more than that on sculptures) it is newsworthy because the sculpture was conceptual art. His latest invisible sculpture is a work titled "I Am." The art does not exist except in the mind of the artist. Garau says the sculpture may be displayed in any light (even imaginary light). The buyer gets a stamped receipt in exchange for payment of $18,000, assuming they can't just imagine they paid.
In 1958, artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) opened an exhibition called "The Void," which saw him place a large display case in an empty room. Thousands of people paid at a Paris gallery to happily stare at nothing at all.
Following the show's success, the French artist then took the idea one step further. He gave collectors the chance to purchase a series of non-existent and entirely conceptual spaces in exchange for a weight of pure gold. A handful of buyers actually took him up on the offer.
Now, almost 60 years after Klein's death, Sotheby's is auctioning off one of his receipts for invisible art. The receipt is estimated to sell for over a half million dollars.
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| A receipt for nothing is worth something |
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| I should have kept some of my early finger paintings |
Similarly, on the Iowa State Capitol grounds, is an artwork by American artist Luther Utterback (1947-1997) with one of those no-seeum elements in it called, "Five Stones, One Tree." A seminal work of art by the artist, aptly extracts the evolutionary cycle of growth and decay in nature – the essence of being."
ReplyDeleteFunded by the State of Iowa, Art in State Buildings Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The program was coordinated by the Iowa Arts Council, a state agency.
Iowans, being a staid people; a skeptical people by nature in all things, bought this five? stone obviously-just-four stone sculpture in 1979 with little fanfare (It was art they were told.) , despite the fact only four stones can be seen AND THERE WAS NO TREE!
https://dsmpublicartfoundation.org/public-artwork/five-stones-one-tree/
Another of Utterback's excellent sculptures called, somewhat appropriately, "Untitled," I discovered, is in Des Moines, Iowa, north of the MacVicar Freeway, near Cheatom Park. https://dsmpublicartfoundation.org/location/cheaton-park-neighborhood/
ReplyDeleteIt's so artistic that a number of Park residents have confused the art installation as a dumpster and, as the image indicates, have thrown an old carpet in/on it, in an effort to rid their community of unsightly trash items. "So that's art, huh? Fooled me officer," said a resident to a Parks & Rec official, after receiving a ticket for illegal dumping.
In a yet-to-be-gentrified neighborhood not far from the Iowa State Capitol there is a gallery purveying intoxicating beverages. On a pedestal within this fortress-like building are displayed suitcases of Guinness Extra Stout for those whose taste is all in their mouth.
ReplyDeleteI believe this gallery is east of "Untitled", if i'm not mistaken. I particularly appreciated the bars on the windows and in front of the cashiers. Very surrealistic.
DeleteNo, I was wrong. The Central City 'gallery' is east and north of Cheatom Park on Second Avenue. Swell memory though. Good job.
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