Art Stories

Yesterday during art in the dark I was introduced to a new artist during the lesson. I can't remember his name (more due to my memory than the THICK accent of our professor) but his work definitely made a statement. This Scottish artist found and resurrected an old row boat. He built it up just like new. Then he put a wood-burning engine in the boat to propel it through the water. One day the artist decided to take his boat out on the loch. The engine needed wood to keep the boat going, so the artist started cutting up pieces of the boat and feeding it to the engine. Soon, all of the boat was gone so it sank again to the bottom of the loch. Pointless? NO. Cool.

Sophie Calle is a French artist who also likes to travel on the road of bizarre. One of her most famous works was a piece where she had her mother hire a private investigator follow her around Paris. She knew that he was there, so she decided to spend the day taking this investigator on a sightseeing tour of the city. They visited some nice museums, a grave of some person, her mothers house, etc. To complicate matters, she asked one of her friends to take picture of the private investigator as he followed her around. The result was a who's watching who... watching who.

Here's another one that I find quite funny. A man from San Francisco wrote a letter to Sophie in Paris. His letter said that he was very sad because he had just lost the love of his life. He could no longer sleep in the bed that they once shared together. The man asked Sophie for help. So Sophie decided to send the man her bed via FedEx. Sheets, mattress, pillows, everything went to San Francisco. The man received the package and slept in the bed for several weeks. He said that it made him feel better - and when he thought that his emotions had recovered sufficiently, he sent the bed back. The End.