The spray-painted work Girl with Balloon, by the mysterious artist who goes by the name Banksy, was put on sale at Sotheby’s in London earlier this month. Soon after the hammer fell, with a final auction price of US$1.4 million, the painting began emitting a beeping sound, and the canvas began to slip down as it was fed through a paper shredder installed inside the frame. Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, with only half of the canvas shredded.
The media lapped up the ensuing astonishment and confusion. Banksy would later release a short video on his Instagram site showing the process of installing the shredder, revealing himself to have been the culprit behind it. He had wanted to prevent the sale of the work, should it ever be put up for auction.
Graffiti artist Banksy started his own brand of guerilla warfare from Britain, targeting cities throughout the world with works of social criticism and satirical comment on capitalism. This type of self-destruction, the anti-art approach on display on this occasion, of fighting against the idea that art is a commodity to the bought and sold, has a precursor in Dada, Conceptual Art and Performance Art. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) famously entered a signed urinal for an art auction, in so doing creating a Dadaist masterpiece.
Photo: AP
照片:美聯社
When the auction hammer hits the gavel, it is not just the price of the auctioned work that is being decided, it is the piece’s place in history and its market value. With every auction, these are being renegotiated and redefined. The mechanism of the art market is an even more mysterious, invisible hand; the market value, represented by money, has symbolic significance collectively decided by the society.
As such, Sotheby’s announced that Banksy’s Girl with Balloon was the first instance in the history of art in which the work was essentially created within the auction venue, and that it would rename the new piece Love is in the Bin and sell it to the original winning bidder at the auction price. It seems that Banksy hath protested too much; could it be that he has been seduced by capitalism’s dark side?
Banksy subsequently released another video, with a shot showing a hand pressing a remote switch in the auction house, followed by another showing the process of testing the shredding device — in which the entire canvas was successfully cut into strips — as a way to explain his true intent. In this, the creation of this new work could only have been possible in the social media age: a living artist engaged in a dialectical negotiation with an auction house and the media, even to the extent of manipulating the orientation of the discourse surrounding it. This meta art approach succeeded in deconstructing the traditional passive process of a work of art having its value decided from outside.
Photo: Screen grab from YouTube
照片:擷圖自YouTube
(Translated by Paul Cooper)
代號「班克西」的匿名藝術家,其噴漆畫《Girl with Balloon》(氣球女孩)本月初在倫敦的蘇富比拍賣會上標售,美金一百四十萬元落槌後,這畫開始嗶嗶作響,然後畫布一瀉而下,穿透畫框內藏的碎紙機絞成碎條……然後奇異地,中途忽然停止,只碎了一半。
這種驚嚇與困惑,席捲了全球媒體,之後班克西在他的Instagram社群網站發佈了一段影片,揭露把碎紙機裝進畫框的過程——原來始作俑者是他自己,理由是防止此畫被拍賣。
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片:維基共享資源
班克西以塗鴉游擊戰從英國發跡,以社會批判、嘲諷資本主義之姿打遍各城。其實這種自毀、「反藝術」——反對藝術作為商品買賣的做法其來有自——例如達達、觀念藝術、行為藝術等。杜象(西元一八八七~一九六八年)把簽了化名的小便斗送進藝術拍賣會,便是達達的傑作之一。
在拍賣會這蓋棺論定的場域,一落槌所敲定的不只是售價,而是藝術史的地位與市場價值。每一次的拍賣,都是一場再討論、再定位。藝術市場機制是一隻更神秘、更隱而不見的手,金錢所代表的市場價值,是社會集體商定的符號象徵意義。
於是,蘇富比宣布,《氣球女孩》是藝術史上第一件在拍賣會中完成的作品,將改名為《Love is in the Bin》(愛在垃圾桶),按原拍定的價格賣給原得標者。班克西對於資本市場的收編,不過是欲拒還迎。
班克西再度發布影片,顯示臥底在拍賣會裡的人按下遙控器,以及測試時整幅畫全部絞碎的情況,為自己辯解。因此這件作品的創作,還擴及社群媒體時代所特有的過程——在世的藝術家和拍賣會、媒體交互辯證詮釋,甚至操縱輿論走向,這種後設手法,大大解構了其傳統待價而沽的被動角色。
(台北時報林俐凱)
South Korea’s famous kimchi is falling victim to climate change, with scientists, farmers and manufacturers saying the quality and quantity of the napa cabbage that is pickled to make the ubiquitous dish is suffering due to rising temperatures. Napa cabbage thrives in cooler climates, and is usually planted in mountainous regions where temperatures during the key growing summer season once rarely rose above 25 degrees Celsius. Studies show that warmer weather brought about by climate change is now threatening these crops, so much so that South Korea might not be able to grow napa cabbage one day due to the intensifying heat. “We
It’s widely recognized that there are far more right-handed people than left-handed people in the world. Being right-handed simply means preferring to use one’s right hand for tasks that involve only one hand, such as writing and eating. But have you ever wondered about the possible reasons behind the global dominance of the right hand over the left? As with many complex biological questions, multiple factors appear to be at play. First, one reason seems to be genetics. __1__ Therefore, the global dominance of right-handedness is something that has been passed down through many generations of humans. Next,
On blazing hot summer days, fresh ingredients and cool refreshments straight from a refrigerator feel like nothing short of a miracle. However, chilled foods didn’t begin with modern refrigerators. In fact, the origin of refrigeration precedes the invention of this now-indispensable appliance by centuries. Initially, the quest for refrigeration was motivated more by the desire to cool beverages than to preserve food. The ancient Greeks and Romans, for instance, used snow stored in insulated pits to chill wine. Around the fourth century BC, the Persians made a significant stride in refrigeration techniques when they devised the yakhchal. Fashioned from
Continued from yesterday(延續自昨日) https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang Finally, cultural influence also plays a role in which hand people prefer. Historically, items that require physical manipulation have been designed for right-handed use. For example, tools like scissors and musical instruments are often constructed with right-handers in mind, making it difficult for left-handers to use them. __4__ While these factors offer some explanation, they remain speculative. The precise reasons for the global prevalence of right-handed people continue to be debated. Nevertheless, left-handedness will remain a phenomenon of great curiosity among scientists and researchers for many years to come. 最後,文化影響也在人們偏好哪一隻手上扮演一角。歷史上,需要用到肢體操作的物品都被設計來供右手使用。舉例來說,像是剪刀、樂器等工具常常就是考慮到右撇子而打造的,造成左撇子難以使用這些工具。因此,許多天生就是左撇子的人可能就必須透過學習使用右手來適應。 雖然這些因素都提供了一些解釋,但它們仍是推測而已。全球右撇子如此普及,確切的原因仍持續被爭論著。不過,在未來的許多年裡,左撇子依然會是科學家和研究人員相當好奇的一個現象。 What Did You Learn? (A) Specifically, different areas of