Posted on 06/16/2005 8:24:20 PM PDT by GPBurdell
Artist Stages 9/11 'Falls' From Museum Roof
Thu Jun 16, 1:05 PM ET
A performance artist wearing a business suit and safety harnesses jumped repeatedly from a museum roof to create photographs that recall scenes from the World Trade Center attack, but his spectacle was scorned by some onlookers and victims' relatives.
Collaborating photographers snapped away as Kerry Skarbakka fell more than 30 times from the five-story Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday. The photographs will be retouched to erase the pulleys and wires that kept Skarbakka from hitting the pavement.
Skarbakka, 34, said he started thinking about falling after watching on television as workers jumped to their deaths from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.
"Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself," he said.
Skarbakka, who lives in New York and was named by ArtReview magazine last fall as an outstanding young photographer, has exhibited similar images of previous jumps.
His antics on Tuesday attracted a crowd of gawkers, who became sidewalk critics.
"It was fabulous," said Darlene Schuff, 56. "I just wanted to be a part of it. It's a happening."
Others in the crowd said Skarbakka's effort was too staged to have meaning.
In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it "nauseatingly offensive," and some who lost family and friends at the trade center agreed.
"What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels," Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. "He's an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something."
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This publicity stunt will garner this jerk some attention, but art meant to gain the "artist" attention by exploiting 9-11 is one of those things even liberal New Yorkers don't much care for.
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The problem with modern art is the notion that "shocking is good."
I don't think this artist was trying to mock the 9/11 victims. But I do think he was smart enough to realize that shocking would get press coverage.
ping to you
It just won't do to remind Americans about the people leaping from the towers. Why,that could stoke outrage and provoke us into flying the flag [supporting the war] instead of hanging yellow ribbons [yearning for Billy to come home].
Great friggin' book. Totally opened my (then) young eyes to the inanities of art criticism. In fact, all criticism.
So is flying -- you just contrive to miss the ground...
IIRC, it was the "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that said, "Flying is easy: you just throw yourself at the ground -- and miss."
Thank you for saying that ... bears repeating!
Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up.
If it helps, I'll pay to see it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1423801/posts
This is not something I do for my art, and I think it disingenuous to retouch the photo to erase the bungee lines.
There's lots of great aesthetic criticism out there. criticism is an artform that's been around since Plato and Aristotle.
I certainly don't deny its long and prestigious history, but most criticism written today is uninformed and uninstructive.
Ezra Pound, for all his political lunacy, had his lucid moments. He once wrote, I think in his book "ABC of Reading" that a good rule of thumb is to only read reviews by people who have written work comparable to the work they are reviewing. Obviously, I'm paraphrasing.
I don't believe in being so absolutist as Pound, but I find that critics are very often absolutely ignorant of the nuts and bolts of what they are criticizing. The most egregious example is in music reviews. How many people writing music reviews for major newspapers these days could explain how to construct a major triad? I bet less than a quarter of them. And yet, they hack away at other people's work, or obsequiosly praise mediocre musicians.
I recognize that there are good critics, but the bad ones far outnumber them...I've come to the conclusion that reading reviews is a less valuable use of my time than reading the books, or listening to the music myself, and making up my own mind.
I think that very often reviewers, since they often don't know that much about what they are criticizing, critique instead the personality, or worse, the politics of the artist. But the absolute worst is when the reviewer is a solipsistic twit who's only really interested in writing about himself. Here's an example, Peter Green in the New Republic, writing about Robert Fagles' translation of "The Odyssey":
Now I have Robert Fagles to thank for a new and precious gift. He has let me hear the rhapsode work his magic, and held me spellbound in those shadowy halls.
Three references to himself in three lines. Granted, it's The New Republic, the bible for solipsistic twits. But that kind of crap is typical of most criticism these days.
I'm not anti-critical. I just view aesthetic criticism kind of skeptically. When I encounter an intelligent, informed critic, I am pleasantly surprised, but for every Nat Hentoff or Hilton Kramer, there are dozens of Peter Greens.
An informed, sincere and insightful critic is a pleasure to read. But they are very, very rare, IMHO.
BTW, I am a Borges fan, too. Borges is one of the few people who I felt had a gift of illuminating other people's works.
There was an interesting little article in the WSJ today, concerning the UCLA grad student who simulated Russian roulette in front of his art class. Two of the art teachers had resigned in protest and the guy was up for suspension for bringing a firearm onto campus. Anyway, the student was won the case and he is not being suspended.
The interesting part was that one of the teachers who protested the performance had done similar, stupid acts when he was young in the 60s and 70s. He had himself shot in the arm, crucified on the hood of a Volkswagon and placed in the path of a flaming wave of gasoline. At least the recent student was only pretending.
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