In News Today, Art Students Aren’t Much Smarter
As someone who majored in a technology-related field through college, I’ll ask you to forgive me for my somewhat low opinion of modern art. But it seems that for every painting of squares that sells for several million dollars, there’s all sorts of things like exhibits that use federal art funding to buy and scratch lottery tickets or out of control rumors about whether or not a dog was starved to death at an art gallery. Those examples, however, I can see some defining as art. The example from this CBC article? Well…
Art student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has been given a conditional discharge and placed on probation for planting an object resembling a bomb outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Jonsson said he wanted people to think about where art is placed and how that changes their view of it. He described it as a conceptual art piece, using plastic, wood and glass and a video.
Instead, it triggered the evacuation of the building and caused the cancellation of a major fundraiser for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research scheduled for that evening.
Jonsson, 25… read out an apology in court, saying he did not realize his art object would “cause such problems.”
He didn’t think that the sight of an object resembling a bomb (pictured above) would cause people to panic? Considering that the police force of other cities have mistaken Lite-Brites and the iconic boxes from Mario for bombs, it’s not hard to consider that people might get scared by something that almost maybe kind of resembles a bomb. Once he’s done his community service in his native Iceland, I’m awaiting his next performance piece, “Yelling Fire In A Crowded Theater”.
Not that I would blame anyone for bombing the Royal Ontario Museum, ’cause damn does the architect of that building need to be charged with public indecency.
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Makes me think of that one art student gal that had some circuity and wires taped to her shirt, and went into an air-port. Then seemed surprised when she got arrested.
There’s a big fucking difference between having a wrought-iron cowboy standing on a subway platform and calling it art, and having a Osama-look-alike running around trying to light a supposed stick of dynamite and calling it art.
“I don’t know, officer, I just wanted to give people a new perspective on art by running around screaming “Death to American Infidels!” and waving around psuedo-explosives. I’m very sorry my art was misconstrued.”
…that’s the museum? It looks like somebody smashed a UFO into a bank.