"There's something about this singular pair of glasses lying on the floor, something about them that just seems to tell a story about the tragic anti-intellectualism of modern Western society."
We'd bet actual money that this was the reaction of at least one person who came across a group of American teenagers' phoney exhibit at the San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art.
Modern art can be great - inspirational at times - but the more minimalist stuff often leaves everyone but the most pretentious culture vultures utterly baffled by what they're being asked to look at.
Here are a few examples.
https://twitter.com/K1ll1an/status/573576758508785665
https://twitter.com/brigittetbh/status/557329760955932675
https://twitter.com/ahmadalshirawi/status/596490730174083073
https://twitter.com/redstappster/status/297531834181496832
There must be people that somehow interpret a deeper meaning from these exhibits or they wouldn't make it into an internationally recognised gallery, but 17-year-old TJ Khayatan and his pals were left scratching their heads at some of the "art" on show during a recent visit to SFMOMA.
They told
BuzzFeed News:
“Upon first arrival we were quite impressed with the artwork and paintings presented in the huge facility. However, some of the ‘art’ wasn’t very surprising to some of us.
“We stumbled upon a stuffed animal on a grey blanket and questioned if this was really impressive to some of the nearby people."
They decided that it was time to reach deep within their souls and unleash their own masterpiece on art lovers at the gallery. The piece? Just a pair of glasses really. A pair of glasses on the floor. And did people stop to inspect? Of course they bloody did.
https://twitter.com/TJCruda/status/734951316095533057
TJ said that it was only a matter of seconds after putting them down that people started stopping to take pictures, so he decided to take pictures of them. Since uploading the evidence to Twitter he's had nearly 45,000 retweets, mostly from people who found the whole thing hilarious.
https://twitter.com/babylatinx/status/735140881607495681
https://twitter.com/JetFajita/status/735312556273872896
https://twitter.com/Bsra7aAwy/status/735491514588143616
https://twitter.com/JarinNealy/status/735408084919558145
Except from King of the Castle here - he's onto something.
https://twitter.com/rapsfan25/status/735623094191153156
TJ was keen to insist that the prank was meant to be good-natured, though. “I can agree that modern art can be a joke sometimes, but art is a way to express our own creativity,” he added. “Some may interpret it as a joke, some might find great spiritual meaning in it. At the end of the day, I see it as a pleasure for open-minded people and imaginative minds.”
Great work.
HT:
BuzzFeed News
