Art

https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s9/olafur-eliasson-in-berlin-segment/ or

https://www.olafureliasson.net/

· REFLECT on these questions: How does Eliasson’s way of making art reflect the reality of the world we live in today? In the past, artists worked as individuals: think, the great Picasso! Van Gogh, Michelangelo. They received accolades for themselves, yet perhaps their goals were different?

Eliasson works with an entire cohort of helpers, experts, brains and hands that help him execute his works. Is this a better way to work? Should I even ask this question?

How do these two ways of working differ (working for praise and accomplishment as an individual versus working as part of a collaborative)? How are they alike? Can they co-exist and that’s OK? It seems to me that there are two extremely significant aspects of the way he works: the group of individuals coming together as a community to create, AND the idea that his works are not just museum pieces: they are for the most part, PUBLIC WORKS. And they are experiential! The experience of these artworks (indicating passage of time and certainly specific site) is the ‘all.’ What can this type of art experience offer the viewer/spectator that a single painted masterpiece cannot? AND vice versa!!?? And I’m not judging these two against each other, but asking, what unique aspect or condition or solution does each address? What does the aspect of community have to do with production? Universality of knowledge? Of Aesthetics!? Of Experience??!!

It’s time to expand your minds, open your brains, pour in some new cereal and think outside the borders of what you thought possible when considering art. You’re going to find that there’s more than just ‘making art’ here. Engineers, manufacturers, architects, sculptors, designers…all sorts of specialists were enlisted to create artworks for Studio Olafur Eliasson! This is artmaking at its universal best! All comments appreciated, but please do not go through and answer my questions in a rote fashion: they are there to initiate dialogue.

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