Is this art?

I’m a bit confused

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18577668

A new work of art featuring a rock weighing 340 tons (308,443 kg) has gone on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in California.


Positioned above a walkway, the outdoor sculpture is designed to look as if it is floating in mid air.

It looks to me like it’s sitting on two grey metal brackets.

It is a little bit crap isn’t it?

And isn’t there that boulder up in Norway that is a natural wonder (and way more beautiful). Here you go…

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=kjeragbolten+boulder+in+norway&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=rt3oT-WfKcfD8QPBgqXYCg&biw=1024&bih=672&sei=st3oT4i7I8bv8QPGkP3NCg#biv=i|23;d|ksiPAkwh_u6uBM:

Yep. That’s art.

I think the criteria for art is- can you sell it as art? then its art.

I am actually floating in midair myself as I type, well I would be if it weren’t for the chair

http://www.laobserved.com/assets_c/2012/06/levitated-mass-palms-lao-thumb-550×357-13772.jpg

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/aPr3BLbXiL16eeG4Hj85HA–/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7aD00NDc7cT04NTt3PTYzMA–/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/a92d9dccb8437c11130f6a7067007226.jpg

http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/13/70/05/3113294/3/628×471.jpg

It looks to me like it’s sitting on two grey metal brackets.

+1

I like it and you philistines don’t deserve my pity

it’s clearly a trojan rock full of muslamic swans with cordite necks sent by Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket

I like it too…not sure what I’d call it.

Must have been a hell of risk assessment for whoever filled out the paperwork though. 🙂

Ive got a smaller version I can let you have for a good price Al

looks very much to me like a visual cue that invokes a reaction.. that makes it art.. (NINJA EDIT: probably)

and as if to prove the point, it’s in a museum of art

Get rid of the brackets and it would look great! But as it is, I guess there’s a few good highball boulder problems waiting to be done on it.

I like it too. Don’t care what you want to call it.

I’d have liked it without those ugly-assed brackets. Really spoils the visual dynamic of the piece.

Look at his history of artwork – double negative
He has a body of work of solid sitting.

you asked about it, it is

aye, I quite like that.

yeah it’s **** amazin whatever you want it to be. next.

I quite like it, for me it’s a found object in an unusual place that causes a response in the viewer especially those beneth it. Is it art? That’s up to you and what art means to you. The brackets do look sloppy though, I’d have preferred the integrity of the rocks mass to be spoiled with an internal bracket of some kind that’s not visibile.

If a large rock had rolled down a hillside and ended up in the same position, would it be art?

I don’t dislike it as such, but I’m not sure I would call it art…
I think I need to read up a bit on the subject, as I don’t really ‘get’ things like this…

I currently have a stone stuck in the sole of my shoe. I wonder if I could sell that as a piece of art that represents the futility of humans stuck in society and unable to break free, but forced to go in directions they don’t want to? 😀

I like it, it’s something different. It’s when it is attributed some arbitrarily exorbitant price-tag, I narrow my eyes a little. As then it’s more about the creators profile, than the actual artworks merits.

Anyway, I can spend hours on here: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/

It’s right up there with the Joh Frankland rock in Hackney

[/url]
shoreditch park boulder 2009[/url] by chrisdb1[/url], on Flickr

The old ones are the best ones…

Heizer, long-crowned the enfant terrible of the art world, has, through his latest Geological oeuvre, transformed our so-called familiar urban landscape of Los Angeles into something self-referential, stochastic, and yet at the same time mundane.

One recalls the Dadaists and the soup cans of Andy Warhol, and one reflects on the normative paradigmatic shift of our hermeneutical age. There are those who will view The mahoosive rock as a didactic polemic, little more than a bete noire, still others who will see it as replete with a fertile esthetic, and others will want to burn themselves into a fiery crisp on national television, imitating (perhaps) the Buddhist monks of yesteryear, whose saffron-colored robes The mahoosive rock echo, in all their evanescent autarky.

I would equate the experience of walking under the exhibit with passing through the birth canal and suggest that those who hate The dirty big rock thing do so because they despise their own existence.

Heizers big ass rock is a physical representation of the artist’s inner dialectic, juxtaposing saffron spirituality and utilitarian steel in a compromised landscape, and bring up the penultimate question: Ou les neiges de temps jadis sont?

Well, thats my take on it anyway…

I got a Land Art book for father’s day.

Was captivated by these

Have a little dream to do a road trip to them someday.

It’s in an Art Gallery, therefore it must be Art.

it has no purpose and it therefore art

It’s in an Art Gallery, therefore it must be Art.

I’ve been in an art gallery…..

Yep that’s art, I should imagine it’s quite a unique experience being under it, shame about the brackets though.

I always found this engaging

Aye, but did you stand still for long enough ??

Half the point of Art is that it can’t be defined, I think, and why the need to define it ?? That’s half the fun as well. I am an unashamed lover of contemporary performance visual art, call it what you will. It’s the “is this bollocks” factor that adds to the general enjoyment of consuming the Art.

Does it really matter if it’s Art ? It’s a rock placed cleverly over a rather stylish vent. I like it.

The boulder on the concrete walkway I can get.

The big grey metal brackets detract somewhat from the “designed to look as if it is floating in mid air” bit.

Just hope the structural engineer got his sums right.

If there’s no colouring in then it’s not art.

For me it is the brackets that spoil it too – you can’t suspend disbelief and be amazed by it because the structural gubbins that keeps it there is on show for all to see.

Really don’t like it – it doesn’t excite me at all.

I’ve never really understood the “is it art” question.
I was taught that if it’s created by someone who calls themselves an artist with the intention of being art, it’s art!

It doesn’t make it good art or bad art, but I don’t see the point of debating whether it’s art or not.

I don’t think he has to try to suspend disbelief.. he’s an artist, not a magician..

although I’m kinda pleased that people are confused about which is which..

If the reaction it evokes is, ‘that’s rubbish’, it doesn’t make it art.

If somebody lets their dog shit on the pavement and doesn’t clean it up, it evokes a reaction, but that isn’t art either.

I would have liked it, but because some pretentious berk has dressed it all up as ‘art’ and tried to give it meaning and significance, I don’t care for it one bit …

Artist Michael Heizer unveiled Levitated Mass to more than 1,000 people on Sunday.

So, 1001 then? … Why not just say exactly how many … Although “more than 1000” is massively unspectacular cosidering there are over 4 billion people on the planet – in the scheme of things, 1000 out of 4 billion = nobody really cares

Positioned above a walkway, the outdoor sculpture is designed to look as if it is floating in mid air.

Design objective failed then as you can clearly see it’s resting on two massive plinth things. Does he think people are that stupid they won’t notice? For goodness’ sake.

The boulder is intended to stay there permanently after being hauled 105 miles (169 km) from a rock quarry.

Bet it’s not there in 100 years time …

Heizer first had the idea for Levitated Mass in 1969. But he did not locate the perfect rock until around seven years ago

36 years to find a massive rock? Where the heck was he looking? Obviously not a ROCK QUARRY. Idiot.

According to the venue, the work combines ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone with modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

Yes, balancing a bog rock on two plinthy things is cutting edge 🙄

To think people used to just dump their massive rocks on the ground.

Marvel at how far mankind has come!

True beefheart. It’s a combination of lots of things, the reaction is an important part. If you ate the turd and got Tracy Emin to film it and the reaction of passers-by, and show it at the Turner Prize show, then it would pass the Art test. You really need to try harder !

But really, this whole argument is like the God vs Atheism thing. God can’t be proven or disproven by scientific analysis, and there is no definitive test for what is/isn’t Art. Give up, you won’t win…