L. Mylott Manning
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The image also ran in the Wall Street Journal
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Vermont College of Fine Arts
Road Kill Press Releases
TOP 10 WEIRDEST WORKS OF ART THIS YEAR
1. 21 Anthropometric Modules Made of Human Fecæs by the People of Sulabh International, India, by Santiago Sierra: You’ve probably seen art that examines power structures before. Santiago Sierra does the same thing—he just uses very nontraditional materials. For an exhibition in London last January, Sierra collected fecal matter (yes, fecal matter) from New Delhi and Jaipur, let it dry for three years, and placed them in large wooden cases to display at the Lisson Gallery. Admirers and skeptics alike could only refer to it as “shitty.”
2. Aliza Shvarts’ senior art project: Aliza Shvarts’ senior thesis project shocked, appalled, and offended just about everyone who read or heard about it. The Yale senior said that she had impregnated herself as many times as possible and then induced miscarriages in order to use her own blood in her final installation. After the story became an Internet sensation, Yale released a statement explaining that the entire debacle was a piece of “creative fiction” intended to explore the ambiguity surrounding the female body. Shvarts bounced back and forth, denying and then affirming the truth of the statement. Either way, Shvarts got a ton of press, but all we got was grossed out.
3. Peter Paul Chocolates by Paul McCarthy: Talk about holiday cheer. Last winter, Paul McCarthy turned Maccarone Gallery into a fully functioning chocolate factory. But the Santa figurines McCarthy designed weren’t exactly traditional stocking stuffers—each little chocolate Santa carried his own oversize, edible butt-plug.
4. In the Beginning... by Bert Rodriguez: Forget looking at art. Rodriguez’s installation at last year’s Whitney Biennial forced you to become the subject. Rodriguez constructed a white cube inside the Park Avenue Armory in which he conducted brief therapy sessions with visitors who had signed up for the privilege. Replete with a tissue box, two brown chairs, and a couple of potted plants, Rodriguez’ room could be any psychologist’s office—but Rodriguez is no Ph.D.
5. Louis Vuitton boutique by Takashi Murakami: Murakami didn’t really build the boutique featured in his exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum last spring. But the fully functioning store stood alongside Murakami’s bright canvases, reinforcing his commitment to examining the commercial aspects of art. The question of whether the store was an artwork or just a strange business move remains, for most, unanswered.
6. Road Kill Stuffed Animals by L. Mylott Manning: As part of this year’s Art in Odd Places festival in October, Manning decapitated, sliced open, or otherwise mutilated stuffed animals, splattered them with red paint, and strewed them along the side of the road around 14th Street. Whether he intended to work out childhood angst or merely add some artificial roadkill to the downtown streets, Manning probably won’t be welcome at FAO Schwartz anytime soon.
7. You by Urs Fisher: Last fall, Urs Fisher’s show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise consisted of nothing more than dirt, rocks, and a big hole. According to New York Magazine, the Swiss artist spent nearly $250,000 of his own money to turn an established Greenwich Village gallery space into a 38-by-30-foot crater of rubble. Some reviewers considered You to be a deconstruction of the gallery space—most viewers just thought it was a big mess.
8. End of the Line by Damien Hirst: At a September auction of his work, Hirst’s formaldehyde-covered zebras, bulls, and sharks sold for millions of dollars. But another high-priced “sculpture” featured at the auction made the zebras look positively canonical. To create End of the Line, Hirst filled a cabinet with medical supplies—and sold it to the tune of $2.4 million.
9. Daddy Daddy by Maurizio Cattelan: If you’ve visited the Guggenheim recently, you too might have come upon this Italian artist’s bizarre contribution to the anyspacewhatever exhibition. An oversize (but very realistic) rendition of one of Snow White’s seven dwarves lies face down in a pool of water in the lobby of the museum. Cattelan may have intended to provoke questions of the characters in popular culture, but all he really makes onlookers wonder is what Disney ever did to him.
10. The Surrender by Ry Rocklen: The Surrender is a stick tied to a baggie propped against a wall. Its artist, Ry Rocklen, featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, explained that he aims to release the “soul residue” of the objects he uses in his artworks. Perhaps in an effort to examine what “soul residue” The Surrender left behind, the Whitney explained in Rocklen’s bio on the Biennial Web site that the sculpture looked as if it were “abandoned by a hobo.”
—Julia Halperin, art editor