From the Saatchi Art site, where you can buy, sell, and view kabillions of pieces of Art, we present the Not Safe for Work viewing page for FUCK ART, by Francois Ghys: [NSFW]
The Saatchi site instructs us: “This statue is made of bronze from Kalachnikov AK47 ammunition, collected and destroyed by the Swiss Foundation for mine action. The brass of the ammunition is added to tin to produce a bronze with a beautiful golden color with a dash of red.”
At first we thought of the Kurt Vonnegut book Cat’s Cradle:
The custodian at the cemetery gate told me how to find the Hoenikker burial plot. “Can’t miss it,” he said. “It’s got the biggest marker in the place.”
He did not lie. The marker was an alabaster phallus twenty feet high and three feet thick. It was plastered with sleet.
“By God,” I exclaimed, getting out of the cab with my camera, “how’s that for a suitable memorial to a father of the atom bomb?” I laughed.
I asked the driver if he’d mind standing by the monument in order to give some idea of scale. And then I asked him to wipe away some of the sleet so the name of the deceased would show.
He did so.
And there on the shaft in letters six inches high, so help me God, was the word:
MOTHER
Ha! Is every ridiculous thing anyone ever imagined real now? Nice monument, a 10-foot-tall glistening metal dick for fighting war with a phallus, or wait, for fucking (verb) war? Or wait, maybe it’s a weapon to be used in the FUCK WAR? Why is art so hard?
The Saatchi site provided clarity:
AKT is an editor based in France near Geneva. AKT is creating art objects from weapons, destroyed by the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD). Our designers and craftsmen create in small workshops in France, objects with a bold design and an excellent quality.. In making art from destroyed war weapons, AKT makes a statement of its commitment to work towards peace.
In partnership with FSD, we offer to our customers the chance to pay their respect to all the courageous men and women working to build liberty.
So, “Nice phallo-monument to Peace,” we thought, but then we peeped the dimensions again: “10 H x 2 W x 2 in,” and now we believe we got fooled by some forced perspective in the photo. This is a 10-inch weencasting, not a 10-footer, and we don’t like to be vulgar, but $5,478 (shipping included) is a lot to pay for something that size.
If you’re looking for something cheaper or bigger or less didactically conceptual, Saatchi’s recommendation engine has abstracted the essence of the piece into an apparently artificially-intelligently selected assortment of alterna-phalluses, all of them jutting out the top and bottom of their assigned thumbnails. Hey, $880 for that Flatiron appendage seems reasonable!
