The new clothes of the emperor or...?

( One way or another, the normal picture-posting procedure didn't work on my computer so I will show the belonging pictures maybe afterwards)

All of a sudden it was there… I knew they were busy repairing or renewing the bridge, but I never could imagine that it would become such a … thing. A thing, it stood there, irreversible, mocking, provoking: see me standing here! Behind it, the sad walls of a 18th-century building, I think the oldest prison building in the Netherlands, maybe in Europe. A prison can seldom be considered a monumental building from the past but this was certainly one that could be considered that way. It is still functioning as a prison, and carefully maintained and kept up to the newest requirements of a modern prison. But, as the artist/architect of the bridge maybe would have thought, we don’t live anymore in those times, now we have different forms and colours!

And also, all of a sudden, it was there, the construction, intended as a piece of art, in front of our school, the CHN (www.chn.nl) . At first, everybody discussed it, but it didn’t tell anything, it didn’t have interesting forms or didn’t try to communicate any meaning or whatever, it just stood there, provoking. All we knew was that it had been constructed meticulously to avoid damage by storms, although it seemed to be pasted together in a casual and accidental way, almost a product of a disastrous storm or earthquake itself.
There have been many art trends, especially since about 1850, that purposely tried to shock the audience. (This is a reason why Van Gogh died in poverty, and why he was despised during his stay in Arles, the same town that now boasts being the dwelling place of the painter). Remember Dada, the toilet piece of art by Marcel Duchamp, the screaming colours of the “fauves” (“wild beasts”), etc. Now that we live in 2006, many artists still try to shock but it won’t work anymore, but one way or another it raises questions.

The last example is from Rotterdam, where the City Council spent a huge amount of Euros to a statue depicted above: Dwarf Buttplug by Paul McCarthey.

The newest trend is “conceptual art”, but these constructions I show don’t belong to this school of art I think.
The problem with these forms of art or architecture is maybe what I would call the “New Clothes of the Emperor Effect”, from the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen. There is an architect, an artist who produces a piece of work or presents some new style and he himself and an elite around him proclaim that “this is it, this symbolises…” and then a palaver of praising and philosophing thoughts and statements will follow. Everybody who want to belong to the chosen circles of arts-understanding people look at it seriously, they nod their heads and say: “yes, there is something in it, I think it’s great”.
Again: does art have to be aesthetic? If we think of “aesthetics” as “rules of being beautiful and/or evoking good thoughts and feelings within ourselves”, do we think, then, that art has to meet that criterium? What are the rules of art? And, more specifically, also concerning the public space? Because the public space belongs to all of us. Suppose I would have to pass the bridge near the prison every day to my workplace, is it justified to confront people like me with such controversial colours and forms? Is it justified to put a “debris”-construction in front of a school where every day hundreds of students (also from China and African countries) pass on their way to class or library?
Let me put it this way: the first feeling that comes up in me is anger. I really hate expressions of art like these. In my village a world famous architect used to live (he passed away recently): Abe Bonnema. He used to design buildings that are characterised by their simple forms: mainly square boxes, no frills and thrills, just like the Twin Towers. If we want to be modern, then take him as an example. What I also don’t understand, but simply “have to take” just as the melting down of the North Pole, is the trend in oil-states and Shanghai to put huge, very expensive, enormous, luxurious etc. buildings together. My little, ugly bridge near the prison is peanuts compared to these Kitsch-examples with wow-effect. What moves people, for heaven’s sake?