Tuesday 24 February 2009

Aaron Barschak


Look what iv found..
Whist doing some research for my 1500 word essay for Critical studies, I was reading J. Careys' WHAT GOOD ARE THE ARTS. There is a whole chapter in this book which debates, What art is?(very interesting).

Reading on I came across an example to challenge what is seen as art, It said that in October 2003 a man called Aaron Barschak who calls himself the 'comedy terrorist' tried to pull a stunt which he had a reputation for, this time in the Modern Art Gallery in Oxford.

Apparently Barschak was up in Oxford magistrates court on charge for criminal damages for splashing paint all over the walls of the Art gallery, which also splashed the work of the Chapman brothers and Jake Chapman.

In his response to this he stated he had over heard a conversation the Chapman brothers were having over the exhibition 'The rape of Creativity' which feature cartoon heads drawn over a series of etchings of Goya's 'disaster of war'. He further stated at the point of splashing the paint he was merely trying to recreate he own work of art, using someone else's work and that he would enter it for the turner price draw. Which in effect was exactly what The Chapman Brothers did with ' The rape of Creativity. His story didn't work and the judge gave him 28 days in prison.

In my opinion after reading this and the rest of the chapter, I find it difficult to find where Barschak went wrong except for the fact that he splashed Jake Chapman. OK, it was amazingly cheeky and damaging to walk into a gallery and splash paint everywhere, but to say its not art and to disregard it simply because of the way it was created is wrong. I think the way it was created is part of the art and I think it was Genius. It challenges what the world believes to be Art, something which has created much of a stir for many centuries.

The judge should have been put in the box and asked, In your opinion what is art? maybe then Barschak would have got his way.

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