< Ode to an Oak Tree >

[rayheinrich]

                                        < Ode to an Oak Tree >



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Separate prose statement*:

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?
A. This ode is similar in structure and content to Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" except
that it's an ode to an oak tree that is 42 meters to the left of Craig-Martin's oak tree.
This oak tree takes the form of a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid and this ode takes the
form of an image of a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid" (hereafter know as "Kool-Image").

Q. Do you mean that a Kool-Image is a symbol that stands for "Ode to an Oak Tree"?
A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the content of Kool-Image into that of "Ode to an Oak Tree".

Q. It looks like a Kool-Image.
A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a Kool-Image, it's "Ode to an Oak Tree".

Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?
A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the visual form of the Kool-Image and,
as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of change
in terms of an altered form, no such proof exists.

Q. Haven't you simply called this Kool-Image: "Ode to an Oak Tree"?
A. Absolutely not. It is not a Kool-Image anymore. I have changed its actual content.
It would no longer be accurate to call it a Kool-Image. One could call it anything one
wished but that would not alter the fact that it is "Ode to an Oak Tree".

Q. Isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes?
A. No. With the emperor's new clothes people claimed to see something that wasn't there
because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw "Ode to an Oak Tree".

Q. When precisely did the Kool-Image become "Ode to an Oak Tree"?
A. When I photographed the drawing.

Q. Does this happen every time you photograph a drawing?
A. No, of course not. Only when I intend to change it into "Ode to an Oak Tree".

Q. Do you consider that changing the Kool-Image into "Ode to an Oak Tree" constitutes an art work?
A. Yes.

Q. What precisely is the art work? The Kool-Image?
A. There is no Kool-Image anymore.

Q. But "Ode to an Oak Tree" only exists in the mind.
A. No. The actual "Ode to an Oak Tree" is present in the form of the Kool-Image.

Q. Did the particular "Ode to an Oak Tree" exist somewhere else before it took the form of a Kool-Image?
A. No. This particular "Ode to an Oak Tree" did not exist previously. I should also point out
that it does not and will not ever have any other form than that of a Kool-Image.

Q. How long will it continue to be an "Ode to an Oak Tree"?
A. Until I change it.



Notes:

Conceptual art has been around for a long time; it's called "literature".

I actually like Craig-Martin's "An Oak Tree", to the extent that it's a parody
of blind faith. You can never have enough parodies of blind faith. And lucky
for him since the first one was a cave painting in East Africa (anthropology's
current favorite origin of humans) and they've been coming hard and fast
ever since.

*"Separate prose statement" was mostly stolen from Craig-Martin

Landover Baptist Church

Kool-Image: photograph of an illustration of a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid

Free-Ranging Allowed, Creative Responses Encouraged

[billy]

i'd like 5 grams of whatever you're on,
i'm unable to do a creative response...yep, sill unable

simply excellent

[John Galt]

Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times, only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or to infer a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the artist is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. It has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned. Once given physical reality by the artist the work is open to the perception of al, including the artist. (I use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the sense data, the objective understanding of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work of art can be perceived only after it is completed.

From Paragraphs on Conceptual Art
By Sol Lewitt

The poem "Ode To An Oak Tree" is a twist on conceptual art as I understand it, and for that reason I thought it was fantastic. JG

[ellajam]

Leave my Kool-Ade alone.
Kesey and Jones have done damage enough.
The gay movement does not own the rainbow.
I know I'm under an oak when the squirrels acorn-bomb me.

I just want to sit in the shade,
watch the colored flags ripple
and drink red sugar water.

[ChristopherSea]

No disrespect to ray's fine piece, but let's not forget the grand history of the Conceptual Art Movement. The real meaning behind 'Movement' is revealed as you read through some of the historical achievements below.

Conceptual Fart milestones:

• 1960: The artist Stanley Brouwn declares that all the shoe shops in Amsterdam constitute an exhibition of his work.

• 1961: Piero Manzoni exhibited Artist's Shit, tins purportedly containing his own feces.

• 1962: Christo's Iron Curtain work. This consists of a barricade of oil barrels in a narrow Paris street which caused a large traffic jam. The artwork was not the barricade itself but the resulting traffic jam.

• 1962: Piero Manzoni created The Base of the World, thereby exhibiting the entire planet as his artwork.

• 1964: Yoko Ono publishes Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings. An example of Heuristic art, or a series of instructions for how to obtain an aesthetic experience.

• 1965: A complex conceptual art piece by John Latham called Still and Chew. He invites art students to protest against the values of Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture, much praised and taught at Saint Martin's School of Art in London, where Latham taught part-time. Pages of Greenberg's book (borrowed from the college library) are chewed by the students, dissolved in acid and the resulting solution returned to the library bottled and labelled. Latham was then fired from his part-time position.

• Joseph Kosuth dates the concept of One and Three Chairs in the year 1965. The presentation of the work consists of a chair, its photo and a blow up of a definition of the word "chair". Kosuth has chosen the definition from a dictionary. Four versions with different definitions are known.

• 1966: N.E. Thing Co. Ltd. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter of Vancouver) exhibited Bagged Place the contents of a four room apartment wrapped in plastic bags. The same year they registered as a corporation and subsequently organized their practice along corporate models, one of the first international examples of the "aesthetic of administration."

• 1969: Robert Barry's Telepathic Piece at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, of which he said 'During the exhibition I will try to communicate telepathically a work of art, the nature of which is a series of thoughts that are not applicable to language or image'.

• 1969: Vito Acconci creates "Following Piece," in which he follows randomly selected members of the public until they disappear into a private space. The piece is presented as photographs.

• 1970: Douglas Huebler exhibits a series of photographs which were taken every two minutes whilst driving along a road for 24 minutes.

• 1972: Fred Forest buys an area of blank space in the newspaper Le Monde and invites readers to fill it with their own works of art.

• 1973: Jacek Tylicki lays out blank canvases or paper sheets in the natural environment for the nature to create art.

• 1977: Walter De Maria's 'Vertical Earth Kilometer' in Kassel, Germany. This was a one kilometer brass rod which was sunk into the earth so that nothing remained visible.

• 1999: Tracey Emin is nominated for the Turner Prize. Part of her exhibit is My Bed, her dishevelled bed, surrounded by detritus such as condoms, blood-stained knickers, bottles and her bedroom slippers.

• 2001: Martin Creed wins the Turner Prize for The Lights Going On and Off, an empty room in which the lights go on and off.

• 2004: Andrea Fraser's video Untitled, a document of her sexual encounter in a hotel room with a collector.

[shemthepenman]

this is a bit like a spoof of the godfather brought to you by the makers of scary movie.

the fact is, An Oak Tree, as an art object, is beautiful, with a mildly interesting concept tacked on. And we can call it 'mildly interesting' now of course, because, post the post, we're all on top of that, aren't we? are we? aren't we? Not so sure. Seems it still warrants endless tedious explication.

we could help it along like bruce lee said 'be water, my friend'. Be water. Be/ontology/water/process. Under Whitehead Deleuze said 'the abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained; and the aim is not to rediscover the eternal or universal, but to find the conditions under which something new is produced (creativeness)'. Ya get me bread bin?

[Erthona]

Conceptual art is great for people who don't want to put the time in to learn the skill necessary to do real art.

---

Chris, you forgot to mention the event when Debussy (I think) sat down at the piano and close the lid for thirty seconds, then opened the lip, got up and left. I think he called it thirty seconds of silence.


dale

[ChristopherSea]

Conceptual art is great for people who don't want to put the time in to learn the skill necessary to do real art.

---

Chris, you forgot to mention the event when Debussy (I think) sat down at the piano and close the lid for thirty seconds, then opened the lip, got up and left. I think he called it thirty seconds of silence.


dale

Yes Dale, a real artist can get away with something like that. It's the pseudo-artists trying the same that is about as significant as calling a fart art. In her defense, some can strive to be as talented as Yoko Ono, but no one can pull off a stunt as big as breaking up the Beatles.

There was a vomit 'artist' is the news recently, but it was nothing original. My blueberry vomit on my Dad decades ago was more brilliant.

[rayheinrich]

"The art is your thought." - Marshall McLuhan, "From Cliché to Archetype"

[ellajam]

"The art is your thought." - Marshall McLuhan, "From Cliché to Archetype"

Long time. My first response was whose thought, the artist or the recipient of art? but it's both. If a tree falls in the forest is it art?

McLuhan, long time no see, "I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." (Marshall McLuhan)

I came across this site that I found interesting.

McLuhan Misunderstood.

[rayheinrich]

"The art is your thought." - Marshall McLuhan, "From Cliché to Archetype"

Long time. My first response was whose thought, the artist or the recipient of art? but it's both. If a tree falls in the forest is it art?

Only if there's some idiot there who 'found' it.

McLuhan, long time no see, "I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." (Marshall McLuhan)

I came across this site that I found interesting.

McLuhan Misunderstood.

Wow, thanks, loved it; has my head exploded yet?

“You live unconsciously in a new environment of electric ‘software’ or information … New environments are always invisible. It is the preceding environment that is always blamed for the damage done by the new one … The Greek word for environment is perivallo, which means to strike from all sides at once.”