Friday, June 15, 2012

30 Things "The Scream" Is Screaming, 18 (Is This Art?)

Let's talk art experts, briefly.  Here's a funny quote from an "art" "expert" that was interviewed by CBS just before "The Scream" sold for the outrageously stupid price of $119,900,000:

Sue Prideaux will be in the room when "The Scream" is auctioned. She wrote a biography of Munch. The painting is expected to fetch up to $200 million at Sotheby's auction in New York.

"If you look at the billionaires, there are only so many private islands they can buy, private jets, private yachts. There's only one Scream," said Prideaux.

Sue Prideaux wrote a biography of Munch, and yet she didn't know what I, a lawyer who blogs, knows about him - -that there's not only one The Scream, there are four.  Sue Prideaux should read my blog, and then she might have something to back up the Ph.D. in Whedonology she's flaunting.

The Scream sale was a bit of a disappointment, it turns out: It was expected, according to that article that predated the sale, to bring as much as $200,000,000.  More from that article:


New York art dealer David Nash said the piece could sell for much higher than its auction estimate of $80 to $150 million.

"A dealer said you can always re-make the money. You can never re-make the painting," said Nash.
 Okay, first of all, if there's anything more deceptively stupid than the Four Degree Guarantees that the nation's weatherman give out (guaranteeing the temperature within 4 degrees either way gives you an 8-degree window, virtually impossible to miss if you have the National Weather Service's forecast, which they do) it's an estimate of $80,000,000 to $150,000,000.

That is a range of $70,000,000.  That's not an estimate; that's just saying how high numbers go.  "I estimate that in your lifetime you'll earn between $1 and $1,000,000,000."  NAILED IT!

The "art" "experts" opinions, pre-sale, were worth reading this article today, as Sue Prideaux, Humorously Erroneous Munch Biographer, established her credentials in that world by adding

"There aren't many works of art that are blow-up dolls, are there?" Prideaux joked.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED:  While I wasn't able to find a Night Watch series of blow-up dolls (it's only a matter of time), I was able to find blow-up doll art, and that's close enough to prove Prideaux even more amusingly wrong:




Sander Reijgers is, to quote this site,

 a dutch artist based in Utrecht who create[s] assemblage sculptures using pieces from plastic blow up dolls. In his latest work Reijgers has created a series of objects made by cutting and sewing together pieces from the sex dolls, including soccer balls, gloves and pieces of clothing. the works also comes with explicit titles that point out where the materials originated; ‘sexball’ and ‘titball’ are among these titles.

And while not quite art, there are also clothes made from blow-up dolls (clothes can be made from anything, so we can probably stop having "news" stories about people making clothes out of prom dresses and math homework, just as we can stop having stories about cars that run on grease from the local diner; if it can burn, a car can run on it.  It's not that remarkable.)

The clothes are not actually all that great,


but perhaps if your wearing that "8-Ball" jacket didn't get enough of a snicker from your hipster crowd, that one would do?

There is also a short story, available for free online, called "The Secret Lives of Blow-Up Dolls," by someone named Robyn Art, which is a pretty neat way of twisting Prideaux the Expert's words around and making her feel silly, again: Since literature is art, there is a piece of art that is about blow-up dolls, made by someone named Art.  (You can read that story here.)  I read it while listening to Enya, which made it seem pretty poetic, and I liked it. 

Today's caption:


 If it lasts long enough,
someday the BLOW UP DOLL
version of me will be worth 
$119,900,000... or more!
Previous:

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2 comments:

Lara Schiffbauer said...

So, this is how naive I am. I didn't know sex dolls came in different colors. That is one weird piece of art...

Andrew Leon said...

There are also some movies that center around dolls. Maybe not inflatable ones, but it's close enough, and movies are generally considered art.