Global Artists

September 7, 2004 10:30 AM

Global Artists.If influential historical figures were reincarnated as artists, what works of art would they produce today? [Via Aeiou.]
posted by homunculus (2 comments total)

Nice satire of the verbal b.s. -- or "dark matter" -- that constitutes 90 percent of all contemporary art, and explains the discrepancy between the huge, oppressive mass of the art infrastructure and paltriness of the visual matter is serves.
On another point... Adolf Hitler, of course, was a highly self-conscious artist, and used the crowds, the banners, the lights, etc., as his media for overall emotional effect. One of the most unpopular comments made by any public figure after 9-11 was Carlo Stockhausen's description of the perpetrators as "artists" -- which, of course, they were.
posted by Faze at 10:56 AM on September 7, 2004

And Mao's contribution was, indeed, very Mao-like; he was constantly transforming identities among his people - almost like that famous classroom experiment in which students with certain hair or eye color (I think it was) were arbitrarily designated as outcasts. Yeah - I'd like to see more of these. (And give us some goils, please: Elizabeth I, would be cool, for example. She was quite a performance artist in my estimation. Indira Gandhi would be interesting; Maggie; Victoria; Cleo; Isabella; Golda; Joan, Sappho... ).

I also like the idea behind "Fascinum" on that site: A grid of the most viewed news pictures (ranked from 1 to 10) on different national Yahoo portals. Would be really, really good if they were linked.
posted by taz at 11:09 PM on September 7, 2004