Ahh, Art bollocks. Where would we be without these inane ramblings, sorry, uninformed idiocies, sorry in depth analyses? Most art-worlders can make a good stab at it…
“Without doubt the best work in the exhibition – the artist has allowed himself time and freedom to sensualise a compelling dialectical opposition whilst never merely re-presenting images usually regarded as iterations of the matrix. Don’t you think?”
…but if you can’t there are even web-apps to help you out: Art-bollocks generator. Even the most well-meaning cove slip into it every now and again, some say it’s the effect on the brain of four stark white walls. Others believe it’s a natural human defence mechanism when presented with
To celebrate this vital part of the art world we have launched the FLANEUR MONTHLY ART BOLLOCKS COMPETITION!
How does it work I hear no one ask. Exactly as you might expect. Every month we upload a work of art. And every month we send out a plea for the best art bollocks to describe it.
Please add your art bollocks to the comments. The winner will receive a certificate signed by the editor attesting to their art world skill. The certificate itself will be a work of art, so you can write some more art bollocks about that when you get it. The whole thing works on so many levels I can barely cope.
ONWARD!
Leave your artbollocks in the comments for the following painting. I won’t give any details about it yet for fear of stifling your creativity:
Just to start you off, don’t you feel that this is a redefinition or rather, let’s be more honest, a transformation of an intuiting minority – a pre-construction if you will of the very political poetry that it inculcates? The clouds no longer encapsulating the traditional, but giving a patina of glamour to an otherwise unengaged electorate? The focus of the painting, it’s very raison d’être is of course the goat.
Add your art bollocks below!
This competition is advertised on: OfferOasis.co.uk – Competitions and Freebies in the UK
10 comments
Ben Addicott says:
Nov 11, 2011
It was Percy Bysshe Shelley that proclaimed the Poet to be ‘The unacknowledged legislators of the world’ and much the same can be said of the Artist. Blistering truth, pre and post sublime beauty, corporeal ephemerality; these are the tools the Artist must use to define and re-conceptualise his world and the world within the great and borderless Daesin. However, while free in mind and body the Artist is not free from Society and the existential pressures of existence. The Artist is dwarfed by the very deamons he wishes to exorcise, enveloped by them and reduced to the level of slavish ‘producer’ in the great capitalist conspiracy of Fine Art commerce. Within this, surely the artists most iconic work we see the embodiment of the creator’s eternal subjugation.
As the eyes stare out at us, fierce and piercing, we see nothing more, or less, than the emotional soul of the artist: forever trapped beneath a tumultuous sky in its most raw and unflinching bovineal form.
Paddy Garrigan says:
Nov 13, 2011
..the gently placid expression of the cow an interesting counterpoint to the heavy skys above. What does this cow know about the impending storm that we don’t? How long until the figure at the rear as been exposed? And when does the goats turn to be milked come around again? Questions we’ve all asked of ourselves in these all-too-short lives.
Mary Hawkes says:
Nov 14, 2011
Notice how the humans and animals look away from the cow, creating a pot-pourri of non-existence in respect of the marginalised animal, which is reflected in the deep sorrow emanating from the eyes of the beast. Here we see a symbol showing exploitation of such creatures, while remaining ignorant of their essential being.
Bernard Delphinskaya says:
Nov 14, 2011
The essentially pastoral scene is overshadowed by the pro-feminist critiquie of the prevailing cultural norm, as exemplified by the dog’s adoration of the, off-centre, and therefore unbalanced, male figure, and the female’s (unobserved), critical stare at the unmasked adoration of the obvious dominant figure.
The in turn poses artlessly, with no interest in those labouring for him, or subject to his control yet his elbow rests overtly, and uncomfortably – hence overtly creating attention) on the symbol of his authority, the staff, with which he maintains order within his erstwhile fiefdom. The juxtaposition of his fleece and her bare shoulder symbolises the unprotected back to which the stick is applied for failure to obey or please. The bare feet, in contrast to his, presumably shod, imply imprisonment and restriction of liberty.
The outrage symbolised by the subjugation of the female is displayed by the cow, another member of the servile class within the frame.
The goats extend the metaphor, the female having grown a protective coat over her unprotected back, and cultivating indifference to the black male goat, who looms over her whilst symbolically defecating on the flower.
The obvious outrage of the cow, the looming cloudbank and shaded mountains are a premonition of the pro-Pankhurstian ethics which lurk under the volcanic mountains in the distance.
PaulK says:
Nov 14, 2011
But what if the cow were Jesus? would we then be drawn so towards the farmer’s stance, the goats, the milkmaid? would we even pause to wonder where the dog has been? No; would we not instead examine ever more intently the cow’s eye, sombre, knowing, whispering to us: ‘Yes, you can milk me, I don’t mind. My father will milk you all dry’?
mka says:
Nov 15, 2011
Inspired by Whistler this sculpture is a means to sensualise the innate experience whilst re-presenting samples often seen as musical moods of the fear
Alex Nodopaka says:
Nov 16, 2011
Karel Dujardin’s explores the relationship between the ethereal treatment of a heavenly event and the expulsion of philosophical rumination. As grassy forms become transformed through the emergent practice, the viewer is left with a critical glimpse of a past era.
The artist masterly brush-strokes the horny Capricorn, a sort of bouc émissaire teasing the ruminating bovine in a visual epicurean concept inferring futuristic filet mignon on skewers.
In the stanza of the dog what starts out as hope soon becomes corroded into a cacophony of beastly chaos in the lower right corner of the painting thus creating a transition from the wishful prospect of past expressionism to a new conceptual synthesis. In his masterpiece, Dujardin’s temporal impressions become transformed through diligent critical iterating practice.
Of the dog sniffing the crotch and the cow out-gassing I most appreciate the earth-tainted soles of the maiden jerking the bovine’s teats. Now here are symbolic feet, that even without washing them, are made to walk all over the viewer making them an integral virtual wishful thinkers wishing to be trampled on the canvas. The truth of the matter is that the chief content of this chef d’oeuvre is the concern of the shepherd as to how far the cow expulses her bowel movement on a canvas astutely positioned outside the frame of reference of the painting. This is 19th century thinking outside the box at its best.
ana goldberger says:
Dec 1, 2011
The goat? No! The dog, by all means! He – for I cannot make myself name the dog an “it”, considering the affection I harbour for those beasts that have always brought me a feeling, not quite, a heightened sensation of well-being, of communing with whatever is natural in the world, this precarious planet much abused by us, humans -, he addresses his eyes towards the young man (a pastor for the goats – black and white?),pointing at the later with his snout, all tense, all attentive in his essential dog-being, as if posing a question to – probably – his master, who, to put it in simple words, not a farfetched discourse, looks at something – what would it be? a person, a beast, a rock, a tree? – out of the limits of the canvas, as equally behaves the maid that milks the cow, which, this one,directing its eyes to the observer, he also on the outside of the canvas, or even a she, which would not make these brief notes become untrue, as if doubting the legitimacy of he, or she, who admires the picture.
Michael says:
Dec 4, 2011
Dear bovine heart of symbiosis.
Art Feministe says:
Mar 5, 2012
A violation of spirit from conditioned hues is portrayed in the eyes alone…a palpable hit from the window of the sacred. The barer of sustenance drained of existence without a second glance…surrounded by the consumed and tainted, conditioned by a blueprint that’s painted. Nothing here is constant except the sky beyond the clouds and the lens behind the stare…a portrait of life expected, lived and dissected….its a reality of sorts but one that is surface…a deplorable link to life on its axis. Preoccupation with sieve like benefits it highlights dysfunction, separation and need…for recognition, connection and alleviation from greed.