Silly Art!

Perhaps you haven't been outside lately. Perhaps you don't like socializing with other people. Perhaps you simply can't be bothered to look out the window. Well, if any of these cases apply to you—wait, check that, if all these cases apply to you—then Old Ken has some news to scoot your way: it's winter. That's right; it's that time of the year when the sun only bothers to show up for about a quarter of a day's work. Winds howl; lakes freeze; snow falls; dinosaurs hibernate. No, wait; that's bears who hibernate ... especially when they play large cats in divisional semi-final games.

While some people seem to like the cold, others don't. Old Ken just so happens to be in the latter company and, thus, sometimes needs a bit of a pick-me-up to get through the cold times and frigid winter months. Cue art, please.

That's right, some silly art has come to my attention of late. And while I'm not sure I have any terrible compelling or insightful stories to tell about said art, I hope the bright colors and general jocund whimsy may buoy spirits worldwide.



Our first specimen, represented in the two preceding images, is a kind of installation piece I recently saw in a gallery space in the creepy, dank crypt of the St. Pancras parish church on Euston Road. This piece was part of a show called "Wasting Time" that featured the art made by people who work as docents and gallery assistants at the Serpentine—a major art space in London. An amusing idea, this exhibition was billed in its promotional literature as aiming "to showcase the work of a next generation of artists whose intense exposure to other peoples' art and the public who view it can only reflect positively on their own practice." While this latter assertion seems like it flies in the face of much artistic pedagogy from the Renaissance onward, we'll skip such pedantics and just move on to the art itself.

Now, as posting of video clips is presently beyond the means of yours truly, I need to ask you to use your imagination a bit here. That is, the installation above was accompanied by the insistent thump of dance music. So, please allow the dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-chicka-dum to resonate in your head as you begin to visualize the animation of the fuschia mannikin who stands dunce-like in the corner here. For, our little pink friend would gently move his tiny arms up and down, roughly in time with the music. The lime green jellyfish of a head that hangs from the ceiling above, however, was not mechanized (thank goodness!). I'm not sure what it all means, but I did think the pattern of light relfecting off the disco ball in the first photograph was quite lovely.



If this is art made by someone who works at a gallery, our second specimen would seem like the kind of art made by someone who works at an art history library. While I don't actually know if this is the case, the art itself was recently cited in installation outside of the library of the Courtauld Institute. The text is Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art (a survey of art that is as ubiquitous in British art history as Jansons' suvery is in the US) as it spreads its new-found wings. As you'll be able to judge from the reflection, the book/sculpture is displayed beneath a plastic dome—a most unfortunate addition in Old Ken's mind, as I would have loved to run my fingers through its feathery, cut-paper plumage. As we say in Spanish, "que lastima!" But, I do these close encounters may offer some winter warmth. I just checked the cockles of my heart and they are spicy!