Danish artist paints over famous art
Chilean-born Danish artist Marco Evaristti is causing quite a stir in Denmark’s artistic community by adding his own personal touches to 14 original paintings from members of the mid-20th century COBRA collective.
Evaristti purchased the paintings himself, for a total of 2.8 million crowns (the equivalent of $600,000 CDN) and painted his own motifs and additions atop works of the likes of Asger Jorn and Pierre Alichensky. While the COBRA movement’s raison-d’être was to create “semiabstract paintings with brilliant color, violent brushwork, and distorted human figures inspired by primitive and folk art,” Evaristti feels their paintings have lost their relevance in our modern times:
“The COBRA paintings today are trivial and deathly banal, acquired by snobbery. They are just canvases which no longer hold content of value and upon which I have simply painted on to give them life once again.”
If the name of Evaristti rings a bell, this is the same artist who, a few years ago, placed goldfish into working and easily accessible blenders, thus challenging art lovers into deciding the fate of the aquatic animals, hoping to raise questions about life and morality.
Personally, the idea of challenging art and its modern relevance are ideas which make perfect sense to me, thus putting me in a “fence straddling” position. On one hand, the pure boldness of Evaristti’s move is a call to challenge what has been done and what needs to be done, a thought which can be applied both artistically and socially. However, one can also argue that while certain works undoutebly remain “period pieces,” they are hallmarks of a period’s relevance and serve to demonstrate the evolution of art. I wonder what some of you Gluemeaties have to say about it.
obviously he just wants attention, he could’ve much easily got his hands on some hi-res captures and made prints on a receptive texture paper and did his thing.
but since this is art in the loosest terms he can carry out his objectives with IDEAS (aka hype) rather than content, and working in ideas he can’t very well paint over reproductions, it’s gotta be the real thing. if he really cared about his work, working off reproductions would be just fine, but then nobody would care.
(also this fish thing sounds retarded, although i’d be down if it was him sitting behind a plexi-glass display case maliciously feeding gold fish into the machine for hours at a time)
The best art is transitory. Bubbles, body art, explosions.
I knew of one guy who’d do these fantastic paintings and once he was finished he’d paint over them using a single matt colour. They were always better in his memory than the actual piece.
Appreciate, be inspired by, Love,..
And then move along.
Art that isn’t transitory isn’t about art, it’s about money.
Pfh. The interesting art in Denmark at the moment (or, well, a few months ago) was the competition drawings by Jørgen Bitsch for the Iranian Government’s competition on holocaust-drawings. Sorry, don’t have an english source at hand, but some Jews were all up in arms about this, calling it ‘holocaust-denials’ and anti-semitic, making obvious their hypocrisy and bigotry.
http://www.humanisme.dk/joergen_bitsch.htm
If you ask really nicely, I might get more sourced material on it.
Canvas isn’t that bloody hard to come by. Make your own damn paintings.
So much of art is snobbery for snobbery’s sake. The statement “The COBRA paintings today are trivial and deathly banal” is a clear sign of idiocy. Art improves in quality of technique, but not in content. You are not wiser than those who came before you. You’re just better tuned to the assumptions of your own time; obviously, they hadn’t seen our time yet. The sort of Whig History that contends man progresses towards a goal, improving with each epoch, is the worst and most dangerous sort of bullshit.
My point is, Dickweed von Lichtenstein isn’t a better artist than the COBRA folks simply because he doesn’t like their paintings. If he’s such a good painter, he shouldn’t have to ride their coattails. The fact is, he’s not a great painter. He’s just a showoff. He flaunts his wealth and his irreverence.
Blech, say I.
Bear in mind I was very pissed off about unrelated matters when I wrote that.
But I stand by the use of the name “Dickweed von Lichtenstein.”
Sev,
Love it.
Everyone else:
What’s done is done. If he felt the need to destroy others work then one can only hope that somewhere down the line a group of art revivalists will paint over his work the original design in an attempt to bring back the mid-20th century art. Ah, the irony of that, it would be glorious.
Now if only he will create a human-sized working blender for himself.
Makes me wish some ‘tard paints over his paintings. How disrespectful!
Isn’t he enough of an artist to do his OWN paintings on his OWN canvas?
He spent 2.8 million crowns to buy those paintings, I’m SURE he could afford canvas and an idea of his own.
Oh! And if they weren’t of any value to anyone, he wouldn’t of spent 2.8 million crowns on something so invaluable.
If he wants to modernize paintings, make his own rendition of what he would of done.
I think it’s wonderful that he pisses so many people off. Kinda silly because he spent $600 000 of, I assume, His own money. I bet if I was given enough time to think on what I’m rambling about it I could find a way of pissing that many people off for less. It’s not really all that original either and anyone that plays god with goldfish is just a turd. Poor goldfish. Poor psychos… Bottomline. I think he’s pleasently silly
PS I’m in an overheated school computer lab with no caffiene so i aplogize if this isn’t entirely in english or even relevant.