One night in 1982 an art student in Philadelphia decided to head out to an area of the city known for transient housing. It wasn’t just a normal night, however. It was the night before trash pickup. As he scours through the trash, garbage and debris, he comes across a handful of random items tightly wound in an encasement of wire. Then, he finds another one, and another… and another. When they are all retrieved from the trash there are 1200 of these “wire sculptures”.
The student turns the collection over to the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia.
These wire bundles rock the world of contemporary art and have since been exhibited in numerous prestigious galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Absolutely nothing is known about the artist. He has become known in the world of outsider art as simply, “The Philadelphia Wireman”.
This sets in motion a whirl of questions in my head. What constitutes art? Can something become art even if it wasn’t created for that purpose? Do we, as a society or an individual have the right to label something as art, whether the “artist” does or not? If the Philadelphia Wireman considered himself an artist then intentionally discarded these pieces as unsatisfactory to him, how can we presume to exalt them to prominence? Who should profit from the sale of these discarded objects? Can anyone legitimately impose intent with no knowledge of the artist?
Speculation abounds concerning the personality and motivation of the Philadelphia Wireman. Personally, I’m not even convinced he considered himself an artist or that he produced these items as objects of sculpture. If he did indeed create them as art objects, he apparently never sought to sell or display them to anyone. They existed as his personal, very private collection. Why else would he hoard all 1200 pieces? One theory is that all of his possessions were abandoned because he died.
What interests me is that these items are recognized and accepted as artwork. I guess that means art is not dependent upon the person creating it (the artist is unknown), the reason it was created (was the intent to create modern art?) or the selection of materials (these were common discarded items).
I guess I’m hoping that in the final analysis, what we establish and regard as art is not merely artificial hype nor a carefully designed marketing decision, but rather, something that resonates a sensation within us that would otherwise remain dormant apart from the eye of the beholder.
2 comments:
Interestingly enough, a fellow artist and friend of mine did something very similar. There is a lot of unclaimed work at the end of the school year which always ends up in the trash from cleaning out lockers and studios etc. So one year in particular my friend decided to go through all of it and sign his name in replacement for the actual artists, taking the disregaurded work on as his own. In reaction to this some people were angry, some didnt care, I myself thought it was extremely clever, but in most cases it caused the artists to go back and reevaluate the merit of their peices. It stirred people to want what they now couldnt have.
But isnt that just human nature? Its interesting that what we do in life, no matter how much satisfaction we gain from doing it or creating it or struggling over it, it never seems to mean anything unless recognized by someone other then ourselves. To us the beauty of our work just becomes part of the quotidian, and I ask, is the everyday really all that bad, or do we just choose to ignore the beauty of its potential.
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