Cleaner removes 'stain' from acclaimed artwork
A determined German cleaner destroyed a piece of art valued at £690,000 by cleaning away what she thought was an unsightly stain from the artwork.
The cleaner got to work on an installation by the late and famed artist Martin Kippenberger at a museum in Dortmund.
Entitled “When It Starts Dripping From The Ceilings” the piece comprised a tower of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom painted brown to give the impression of discolouration caused by water. The cleaner took the paint to be an actual stain and scrubbed the bowl till it looked new.
“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” a museum spokeswoman said, adding that it appeared the cleaner was unaware of museum rules prohibiting cleaning staff getting with 20 centimetres of pieces or art.
Kippenberger was regarded as one of the finest artists of his generation until his death in 1997 aged just 44. His work now commands a high value and earlier this year one sculpture was sold at Christie’s in London for £1,329250.
The Dortmund incident in not the first time a piece of art has fallen victim to a cleaner. In 2004 a cleaner at the Tate Modern binned part of a work by artist Gustav Metzger.
I'm considering getting a SNES and smashing it with a hammer to "symbolize the rage computers have given people". It's BS we all know but I figure I can get $10000 for it or something.
I read the article and there was a comment on it that went something like
"There's a difference between real (they used a different word, I can't recall) art and 'art' meant to part a fool with his money.. We need a few more cleaning ladies out there to remind us of the difference"
i am open to those things. but given the product itself i pretty much say: yeah, art, whatever./sarcasm
When i did my last year in high school we had to do a brochure. One of our classmates made something in like 10 minutes and he did not really care. When later these very brochures were shown to the public during a special school event. Someone actually bought this piece of 10 minutes for over 200€. Classmate told us he had to lie like a ***, about how he is challenged by the blablabla; apparently the person that bought the brochure was so moved from this work...yep.
what i mean to say is: it takes a certain type of person to actually consider the work whether it's a painting or this stuff as a work of creative expression. Yeah you can train stuff like this in a certain way... but still some things are nothing than an overreaction to a certain situation or feeling the "artist" was fronted with.
I'm considering getting a SNES and smashing it with a hammer to "symbolize the rage computers have given people". It's BS we all know but I figure I can get $10000 for it or something.
I wish I could stack a bunch of sticks together over a bowl and sell it for £690,000. :/
You can. Just also be an artsy hipster for a while, then die.
Yeah really though.. "a tower of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom painted brown to give the impression of discolouration caused by water" ... will never understand it.
I wish I could stack a bunch of sticks together over a bowl and sell it for £690,000. :/
You can. Just also be an artsy hipster for a while, then die.
Yeah really though.. "a tower of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom painted brown to give the impression of discolouration caused by water" ... will never understand it.
I'm stuck in an art class required for graduation and I detest it, art nerds are another breed entirely...
Read one of the comments, and I guess it's kind of sad (and a little bit creepy to have her blood <. <) that it was cleaned, and why it can't really be restored back to normal... I really don't know why you would go up to a structure which states "dripping blahblah" and then clean the drips, lol.
Quote:
this piece or art was made from the very same wood from the pallet that fell off a truck and killed his mother, and the plastic bowl was filled with the residues of her dried blood- no wonder it was so priceless and could not be restored.
Now express some remorse about the destruction of such a piece with so much family tragedy in it.
I wish I could stack a bunch of sticks together over a bowl and sell it for £690,000. :/
You can, grow some balls and do it with conviction. Art is about confidence in your message. I won't pretend to "get" every artist point of view but I won't devalue it because I don't have the vision or same level of talent.
And just because you don't understand it, try and have some respect for people works.
Read one of the comments, and I guess it's kind of sad (and a little bit creepy to have her blood <. <) that it was cleaned, and why it can't really be restored back to normal... I really don't know why you would go up to a structure which states "dripping blahblah" and then clean the drips, lol.
Quote:
this piece or art was made from the very same wood from the pallet that fell off a truck and killed his mother, and the plastic bowl was filled with the residues of her dried blood- no wonder it was so priceless and could not be restored.
Now express some remorse about the destruction of such a piece with so much family tragedy in it.
While I do admit that the destroyed work was "garbage art" from the start, I should remind you all that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone posting but the OP has art for their avatar :) How many of you can actually say you created it? I know I can.
If an image or object is appealing to someone, and they have ridiculous amounts of money, why not?
Read one of the comments, and I guess it's kind of sad (and a little bit creepy to have her blood <. <) that it was cleaned, and why it can't really be restored back to normal... I really don't know why you would go up to a structure which states "dripping blahblah" and then clean the drips, lol.
Quote:
this piece or art was made from the very same wood from the pallet that fell off a truck and killed his mother, and the plastic bowl was filled with the residues of her dried blood- no wonder it was so priceless and could not be restored.
Now express some remorse about the destruction of such a piece with so much family tragedy in it.
This is why I don't get it. I mean, I get that it's really unfortunate to have something you worked on destroyed. But, if the cleaning woman just said, "I wanted to show that, because the artist died at a young age, he didn't have the lasting impact on the world that he otherwise could have. Now, that's reflected in his art, as well."
To me, that's just as valid and visionary as the original piece, and, some art does* destroy before it creates.
One of these days I'm going to take a piece of paper that's like 5 feet long, 3 feet wide on one side and 4 feet on the other side and crumble it up and put it in a glass display box, then try to convince people it's my artistic representation of the frustration I feel about the unbalanced and inequality of life between the middle and upper classes.
Of course I'll find bigger more 'artsy' words to use.
While I do admit that the destroyed work was "garbage art" from the start, I should remind you all that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone posting but the OP has art for their avatar :) How many of you can actually say you created it? I know I can.
If an image or object is appealing to someone, and they have ridiculous amounts of money, why not?
If you will look closer there are two artworks in my avatar. Too subtle? :P
While I do admit that the destroyed work was "garbage art" from the start, I should remind you all that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone posting but the OP has art for their avatar :) How many of you can actually say you created it? I know I can.
If an image or object is appealing to someone, and they have ridiculous amounts of money, why not?
If you will look closer there are two artworks in my avatar. Too subtle? :P
My Mass Effect character counts as art?
I think for the most part art these days has gone off the deep end imo... I'm all for abstract and all but some of these people are just droping paint on a canvas at random not with out any real insperation to the outcome.
While I do admit that the destroyed work was "garbage art" from the start, I should remind you all that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone posting but the OP has art for their avatar :) How many of you can actually say you created it? I know I can.
If an image or object is appealing to someone, and they have ridiculous amounts of money, why not?
If you will look closer there are two artworks in my avatar. Too subtle? :P
My Mass Effect character counts as art?
I think for the most part art these days has gone off the deep end imo... I'm all for abstract and all but some of these people are just droping paint on a canvas at random not with out any real insperation to the outcome.
Didn't you get the memo? Computer games are art now.
I think 'modern art' is one of the most overrated and idiotic things we have. I wish more of these 'sculptures' were accidentally ruined.
I once heard on the radio of an art exhibition where you would pay to enter this completely empty room so that you could admire the feeling of nothingness that the artist wanted to go through. I mean seriously? I can stare at a blank wall at home without paying as much as I want. These 'artists' are just swellheads pumped by some idiotic critics that dictate fashion to feel some kind of power.
Some of you may remember the Simpsons episode with Homer becoming a modern sculptor. I can make a pile of junk as well and give it a title and some madeup emotion. Now where is my money?
I think 'modern art' is one of the most overrated and idiotic things we have. I wish more of these 'sculptures' were accidentally ruined.
I once heard on the radio of an art exhibition where you would pay to enter this completely empty room so that you could admire the feeling of nothingness that the artist wanted to go through. I mean seriously? I can stare at a blank wall at home without paying as much as I want. These 'artists' are just swellheads pumped by some idiotic critics that dictate fashion to feel some kind of power.
Some of you may remember the Simpsons episode with Homer becoming a modern sculptor. I can make a pile of junk as well and give it a title and some madeup emotion. Now where is my money?
There was a thread a ways back about someone buying a empty (not blank, empty) frame for some large ammount... I also remember hearing about this guy that would put a paintbrush in an elephant's trunk and it would swipe at a blank canvas... people were buying that too.
Cleaner removes 'stain' from acclaimed artwork
A determined German cleaner destroyed a piece of art valued at £690,000 by cleaning away what she thought was an unsightly stain from the artwork.
The cleaner got to work on an installation by the late and famed artist Martin Kippenberger at a museum in Dortmund.
Entitled “When It Starts Dripping From The Ceilings” the piece comprised a tower of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom painted brown to give the impression of discolouration caused by water. The cleaner took the paint to be an actual stain and scrubbed the bowl till it looked new.
“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” a museum spokeswoman said, adding that it appeared the cleaner was unaware of museum rules prohibiting cleaning staff getting with 20 centimetres of pieces or art.
Kippenberger was regarded as one of the finest artists of his generation until his death in 1997 aged just 44. His work now commands a high value and earlier this year one sculpture was sold at Christie’s in London for £1,329250.
The Dortmund incident in not the first time a piece of art has fallen victim to a cleaner. In 2004 a cleaner at the Tate Modern binned part of a work by artist Gustav Metzger.
