"We Buy White Albums"

[Adam Blake]

This put a big smile on my face!

http://www.dustandgrooves.com/rutherfor ... te-albums/

[NormanD]

But.....but.....but.....harumph..... Art? ART?

Harumph......

[Adam Blake]

Oh, I didn't even think of that. I just like to see all those White Albums being re-united after so many years. Think of the stories they can tell. (Probably many of shocking abuse...)

[NormanD]

Think of the stories they can tell. (Probably many of shocking abuse...)

....involving burning / smouldering bits of psychotropic material on the cover.

[Adam Blake]

No!!! D'you think???

(There's a huge cultural subtext to the fact that cd cases were much better suited to lines of cocaine than the rolling of joints.)

[Rob Hall]

I love this on so many levels. He's a smart kid and I would be interested to see other examples of his work.

[NormanD]

Not to all tastes, however. Comments posted on Feb 18th:

"As art:
1. Conceptually it’s a one liner.
2. It’s an act of curation, collation and mediation – as if that was enough to transmogrify it into ‘art’, and it’s curator into an ‘artist’.
3. Done to death since Duchamp, the ‘readymade’ is an easily accessible ‘style’ rather than something requiring any real conceptual thought.
4. As an art school lecturer, I see this approach time and time again. Everything from rubber bands to photographs of greyhounds.
5. Mr Chang has chosen to take this approach, this time by displaying examples of an ‘iconic’ sleeve, safe in the knowledge that this piece of ‘cultural capital’ is both ‘cool’ and accessible to the mainstream.
6. It also helps that the White Album is, well, white. Surefire signature colour of ‘conceptualism’.
7. It doesn’t say anything new, about anything new (in direct and stark contrast to what the design of the album said itself about the world at the time – specifically the music industry, marketing strategies and the power of the Beatles).
8. The only artistic endeavour in all of this exists on the personalised sleeves, which have been appropriated as ‘narratives’ and re-presented in a gallery setting by Mr Chang, as his ‘piece’ entitled ‘We Buy White Albums’. (I am by no means suggesting that drawing/painting/sculpture etc are the only valid forms for ‘art’, it’s that I can’t see the ‘art’ anywhere else!)
9. With the above in mind, it is merely a display of one persons ability to buy stuff online, display it and call it art.
10. It will merely elicit (and has done so far) responses such as ‘cool’ & ‘really interesting’, in my opinion the two most pernicious reactions one can have to a piece of ‘art’."

These aren't necessarily in line with my own view, I should add - just useful to consider or discuss.

[Rob Hall]

Yeah, well, most of these points are made using language that is so loaded with unspoken assumptions and reliant as they are on the logic of straw men, they barely warrant a response.

(Edit: having now briefly looked through some of Chang's other work, there's not much there that, for me, connects in the way the White Album project does.)

[AndyM]

Conceptually it's a one-liker........ well, most conceptual art is, or appears to be. I think it's great - witty & cleverer than it first appears.

[Adam Blake]

I bet HE doesn't skip over "Revolution No.9"...

[NormanD]

I bet he lays on the floor of the shop, between the stacks, listening intently.

[judith]

I bet he lays on the floor of the shop, between the stacks, listening intently.

...an art in and of itself.

[Willy]

Mornington Crescent!!!!

[judith]

What is 'Mornington Crescent', Willy?

[Willy]

It's a game played on the Radio 4 programme "I'm sorry, I Haven't a Clue" in which other highly convoluted games are sent up.
In depth rules of the game are available by googling but that's by the by. I am really saying Duchamp was taking the piss (punintendo).
I'm forever amazed that people didn't get that fact. As for the folks that buy the stuff, well, as long as they're happy -it's art.