Thursday, April 24, 2008

Been done...

Remember the Washington Post "experiment" with violinist Joshua Bell playing outside a Metro station in Washington, DC, just to see who would notice?

(Via) And so someone (www.Klara.be a Belgian art radio/channel) has done a very controlled experiment for 48 hours with a painting by Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, one of the stars of the contemporary art world. They put one of his paintings out on the street and then filmed it for 48 hours and counted the people who ignored it (96%) and the people who stopped to look at it (4%). See the experiment below:




These kind of "experiments" are silly, because people out on the street, especially outside a Metro station - as was the case with the Joshua Bell experiment - are in the context of getting from A to B, and their senses are attuned to that task, not listening or viewing artwork.

A more interesting experiment would be to put a Luc Tuymans in a group exhibition of emerging artists in some artists' cooperative somewhere, under another name, and then see what happens with jury awards, visitors interests, etc.

Even there the context is a little sketchy, but a lot clearer than having it hung on a busy street.

Or put a John Currin painting on the streets and see how long before someone defaces it.

I personally just like to sit in front of "Watson and the Shark" at the NGA and see how it reels people in.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting, but I agree that it's kinda silly for the same reasons you put forth. I think people often are just too busy being busy.

Lenny said...

Hey Matthew,

Yep... they're always sort of interesting, but out of context...

Chris Combs said...

The Post experiment did win a Pulitzer. Y'know, for what that's worth.

Lenny said...

Hi Chris...

It was definitely a very interesting article and an interesting set up, as was the Belgian set-up... the issue is the context of the "test."

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

I noticed that Nissan made a funny spoof of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXrt5wRPWE

Have fun, Sylvie