But Is It Rubbish?

‘ONE big concern for the doyens of modern art is that it’s so easy to forge.

‘A challenging and very moving piece’ – The Guardian

Anorak’s version of Tracey Emin’s unmade bed recently sold at auction for millions and our Damien Hirst-inspired ‘Half A Fish Finger’ has already attracted bids from excited art lovers in New York and Paris.

But modern art’s accessibility is a double-edged sword. And we are not overly concerned when we read the Independent’s news that a piece by Gustav Metzger is now on a slow boat to a landfill site in Tilbury.

We don’t blame the cleaner at the Tate Gallery for mistaking Metzger’s transparent bin liner filled with waste paper for a sack of worthless rubbish.

We are not here to judge, rather to lend our support and try to replicate German-born Metzger’s ‘Recreation Of First Public Demonstration Of Auto-Destructive Art’.

As the artist so rightly says in the Guardian, the form ‘re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummelling to which individuals and masses are subjected’.

Up to that point, we had been making good progress, but Metzger’s words have placed an entirely new slant on our efforts.

Until we heard the great artist speak, our version had contained some red waste paper, which, as you just heard, would be utterly out of keeping with the artist’s vision.

But luckily, while we fish out the aesthetically unpleasing old KitKat wrapper from our work, Metzger has spotted another already filled bag of rubbish and replaced the discarded original object d’art in a flash of his genius.

And it will do just fine…until the art world sees ours. It’s not overly boastful to say that, next to Anorak’s version, Metzger’s work will look like a bag of crap…’

Posted: 27th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink