Urs Fischer’s Grandmother makes Genius Cakes
“People seem to fear art. Art has always been a word for this thing that cannot be rationalized when you see or hear something that you struggle to explain. But that’s its strength, of course; that’s what the word art is for. For example, I’m reading about Caspar David Friedrich. In the essays, there are many ideas and interpretations about Friedrich’s intentions, trying to personify him, and his ideas and politics. This might all be true to some degree and have actually factored into his decisions, but even he doesn’t know why it’s good. You see, there are so many people trying to explain how a certain piece is interesting, and it’s so limiting––it’s crazy. An artwork is shrunk down to two or three sentences. It’s like you were to say: “This is my grandfather, and he likes leather shoes,” or: “This is my grandmother, she makes really genius cakes.” I think art is like people: you cannot reduce them to a couple of sentences. It is much more complex, much richer.”
-Urs Fischer, in an interview with Massimiliano Gioni, the curator of Fischer’s current exhibition at The New Museum.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 10:46 am and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Urs Fischer’s Grandmother makes Genius Cakes”
naomi says:
Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 10:22 am
Brilliant; so true! It’s important to go make the work, think about it later. All the thinking will be subjective anyway.
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