Art that is still part of our cultural legacy may cease to exist physically through damage, theft or its temporary nature. Examples of lost art include Tracy Emin’s tent Everyone I have ever slept with 1963 – 1995 which was destroyed, alongside a great deal of other works, in a warehouse fire in London in 2004. Hundreds of original pieces, many important to the history of art, were lost in one night, and now only exist in documentation and the national consciousness.
Some art never makes it into the public arena, being considered so degenerate or subversive that it is supressed. Although stashes of collections still come to light, there is still much art plundered by the Nazis which remains stolen. Lost Art considers work which has vanished through accident or design, avarice or political manoeuvring.
Perhaps you could say that art is the manifestation of ideas, and that trying to make art permanent is illogical. Eva Hesse said of her work in 1969, a year before her early death aged 34: Art doesn’t last. Life doesn’t last. It doesn’t matter. And yet her fragile Sans III made of latex which has long since degraded, poetically articulates that transient nature, and is a concept that still transmits, even in a photograph.
11th November 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment