trash or treasure? Liz Magor at the MAMAC de Nice



View from the MAMAC




Liz Magor, Whisper Glitter

I’m all for modern art, but this is too modern.


An insult to human intelligence. 














“I made this.”









4 thoughts on “trash or treasure? Liz Magor at the MAMAC de Nice

  1. I really enjoyed reading your article. In addition to writing poetry and keeping up my with my blog I am also a bit of an artist myself. I mostly enjoy water color & mixed media though I would hardly call myself a professional. I’m also a collector of art and appreciate a wide variety of different mediums and genres. One thing I have discovered since blogging is how much I enjoy connecting with other writers in their various fields. Your article caused me to pause for a moment and reflect on some if my own work which I must thank you again. Your blog is definitely a treasure! Please continue writing. I look forward to reading more if your work.


  2. Great article. Very thought provoking. It really comes down to the issue of what is art and it seems like you’re saying that her work is art and mainly because it is conceptually driven and causes you to engage with the subject or more broadly with the subject of art in general.

    I’m very sympathetic to this view and generally intrigued by this question (as well as the same question regarding beauty). I’m not convinced though for a couple reasons; i think the main one is that I am unswayed by the related line of thought that a thing ‘becomes’ art by placement in a gallery or ‘art’ context. There’s a couple problems with this itself imo, first is that you can’t really define art as things which are placed in an art gallery, this is somewhat like saying music is anything we listen to on headphones. You can conceptualise lots of things that you wouldn’t call music which you might listen to on headphones (sounds of the forest say or a lecture or white noise). Course, this is kind of the point of modern art, throwing an unmade bed in a gallery (or a pile of towels, stack of papers) and what exactly is it?

    My general point is, it’s an unmade bed in an art gallery. If a thing is given the status of art because a person put it there it’s almost the same as admitting we have no idea what art is. Which, that’s fine too.

    Also i’m not sure how much conceptual interest there is in say for example the deer. It’s very blatant and doesn’t really require much high brow or cerebral interpretation or consideration. In my opinion, same as the unmade bed; yes, it’s directly representational of a messy life, not filtered through any form of craft or personal input; its just the unmade bed. I think this is what it comes down to for me. A thing requires what you said too, the conceptual interest (at least to be a really great piece of art) but there must be some semblence of organisation, personal input and craft as well, otherwise you just found a thing and put it in a building. This doesn’t have to be strict, lots of the best art is poorly crafted (especially the case in music: citation: almost all punk music) and some of the worst art has ridiculously high levels of craftsmanship (also music; there’s whole subgenres which are listened to only by other guitar players).

    Sorry, this became a huge somewhat divergent discussion of What is Art. I’m just throwing thoughts around. I really enjoyed your article. It made me spill out a couple paragraphs instead of getting on and making dinner.I should make dinner.

    : (

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Great points. Thanks for your dinner-delaying thoughts.



      This is challenging. Because I agree with you: it’s an unmade bed in an art gallery. Maybe it’s true, that we have no idea what art is. So I’m interested in the question: when does a found thing become art? (Think again of Duchamp’s urinal fountain, how does that compare?)

      Furthermore, how did it get there? The stack of papers, the bed. Do you think it’s primarily due to the influence of the lauded “artist?” Or do you think conceptual explanations suffice to sway those who have the power to choose what the public sees in artistic spaces?

      I’m not sure I possess the philosophical sophistication necessary to satisfy the “what is art” question. Most every criterium I can think of can be disproved. Frustrating. But fun, too. 😉

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The What is Art Question has been unanswerable to anyone’s real satisfaction throughout the entire history of philosophy. I think it was Wittgenstein who put forward the family resemblance theory of language, which is easiest explained through an example. Games all different (soccer, chess, tag, darts, snooker, hide and seek) but we all instinctively know what a game is. There is very little commonality between say chess and rugby and solitaire but we recognise all of them as games. Art may be like this, something we know by a general family resemblance.

        The question around found art is thought provoking. My answer to the question of when it becomes art would probably be; often times it doesn’t. When it does it’s the result of the artist mixing their labour with it in someway. I’m fond of Duchamp’s fountain, because in many ways I see it as a middle finger to an increasingly esoteric art philosophy. Is it a piece of art though? Perhaps because it is one of the earliest examples of this type of found art, I might want to say that it is, but certainly many of the pieces that followed it I would be disinclined to accept into the artistic cannon.

        Thanks for your considered response.


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s