Today I want to introduce you to something I've just discovered a few hours ago. Before the weekend we were talking in class about art, creativity, museums... and one of the most "polemic" points in the debate was "what was art for each of us". Well, obviously it depends on the person, but it has nothing to do with age or sex or... It's something we all have inside and we have to discover. After today I thought I like impressionism painting such as Manet, Renoir or others but now I know that I love many of those pieces of beautiful art which are inside the Centre Charles Pompidou, in Paris. There is the most important and famous collection of modern art and, despite the fact some of you (and I could say "some of us" until today) don't like that kind of intelligent uses of objects which aren't apparently art, I ask you to have a look at least at one of the pictures which the web page below shows. Please. Perhaps you don't like them at all and perhaps you already know all of them but just in case there is someone like me who hadn't already tried, or just to see, because we have to see everything, and then love or hate but see, because it doesn't cost any money, does it?
http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Pedagogie.nsf/0/651D33F89AE541E0C1256D9C00529708?OpenDocument&sessionM=3.3&L=2&sessionM=4.3&L=2
(sorry, the links don't work properly, you'll have to copy the adresses. If you have some idea of how to solve this, I would thank you tell me)
The picture above this post is an sculpture by Marcel Duchamp, a French artist who was born in 1887 in Blainville-Crevon, Seine-Maritime and died in 1968 in Paris. He's known around the world and if you didn't know him because you had heard his surname because his brothers were famous painters and sculptors too. The work is called "Roue de bicyclette" (Bicycle Wheel) and it was created in 1913, although the one in Pompidou is a replica by the Schwarz Gallery in Milan (1964).
Here you have the technique description:
Roue de bicyclette (Bicycle Wheel), 1913/1964
Duchamp created the (since lost) original in Paris in 1913. The Schwarz Gallery in Milan produced this replica under Duchamp’s supervision in 1964. It is the sixth version of this readymade piece
A bicycle wheel assembled onto a stool
Metal and painted wood, 126.5 x 31.5 x 63.5 cm
Now let's open the debate! Who is for having a bike wheel in a museum? Who is against it and says bike wheels have to be spinning in the street? My opinion is bike compounds have lots of things to say in art galleries, and I've realised it today, perhaps you already have your idea or perhaps today you are having a new one like me!
Would you say three white panels hanging on the wall are art? If you want to read more, I've found an interesting blog post which talks about the feeling of visiting Pompidou and seeing things like these panels, which annoys you or change your art concept, sure!
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/06/euroupdate_2_is_science_art.php
(I'm waiting for your artistic answers!)
