There are times when I walk through a contemporary art exhibit and view the work that I ask myself, “What the hell am I looking at?” I am an artist and yet I rarely understand modern art. I certainly enjoy visiting modern art museums and exhibitions, but honestly, I just don’t get most of it. I certainly don’t understand how some of these things get hung and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does the value of art depend on context? The group at Klara decided to find out. With the help of painter Luc Tuymans, they set out to discover if art taken out of context holds the same meaning.
I don’t think this is a good experiment. I would have loved to hear what people on the street actually thought of the piece. I wanted to know if their interpretations would match up with those of the people who visited the exhibit at Moma. Counting the number of people who notice the piece on the street is not enough. We don’t get a sense of what those people thought. We don’t hear their interpretations. We don’t know anything beyond the fact that they stopped to look at the thing hanging on the wall. I would love to a similar experiment run only this time, grab a camera and mic, stop people on the street and ask them what they think of the piece.
Personally, I feel that art’s value does indeed depend on context. I am not versed enough in the world of modern art to glean any value from the pieces I see. I enjoy looking at them, sure. But I would be hard pressed to come up with an appropriate price tag that would make sense to a modern art aficionado. I just don’t get it. What do you think?
