Art is in the eye of the beholder. Ever since Andy Warhold and Marcel Duchamps decided that art is what artists say it is – as long as the buyers are willing to pay, or the gallery willing to display it, there has been a (muted) debate on where the new boundary should go. The last fuel to the fire is the news of Damien Hirst and his work “The impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (basically a shark suspended in formaldehyde). Sold by Saathci two years ago for a reported $2 million, it is now so decayed and faded, that Hirst has proposed to “repair” it. How? By changing the shark and the chemicals. So out with the old, and in with a new set of components that matches the original. Does that make it into version 2.0 of the work, or into a cheap knock-off? Is it still art, and still a classic work? Or simply a product of our media-infused age?
On relevant tangent would be the Asian (Japan / China) view of history and permanence. A temple that has been rebuilt six or ten times, is still considered to be hundreds of years old – as long as the location, design and purpose remains the same. There is even one temple in Japan that exists in two instances – one being used for (???) ten years, while the next is built. Then the first is torn down and rebuilt while the second takes over as the “actual” temple in use. It is more the IDEA of the temple than the actual building that is at the core.
There will always be sunshine after rain – laughter after pain, so why try to limit expression or devotion to a (random) given set of building blocks? Why not just go with the flow and erosion of time, and let the guiding concept take center stage?
