Research - Museum Construct

Different types of artists create as they collect objects for them to put into their own rendition of a collection in a museum.

Such as;

The Hunter is always on the hunt for something to add to their collection.

The Impulsive Buyer is the one that buys on instinct. The impulsive buyer walks into a gallery and immediately falls in love with a work. Without hesitation, the purchase is finalized. This collector likes to be surprised and must be immediately moved by a work.

The Adventurer overlaps with the impulsive buyer but deliberately seeks out unknown, new artists, galleries and fairs. They have an international scope and an open mind, always looking for fresh talent.

The Art Flipper is little liked by artists, gallery owners and other collectors. This collector is in it for the money, and with dollar signs in his eyes, he effortlessly parts with works that have increased in value. The flipper does not buy the work of emerging artists to support them, but rather to benefit from it himself.

And The Thinker can be easily spotted thinking in a gallery with the exhibition text in hand, while thoughtfully taking in all the works in detail. The thinker takes the time to talk to the artist, to understand their work and to exchange thoughts. Before deciding whether to buy, the thinker carefully considers whether the work fits into their collection.

A found object is a natural or man-made object, or fragment of an object, that is found (or sometimes bought) by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it.

Found objects (sometimes referred to by the French term for found object ‘objet trouvé’) may be put on a shelf and treated as works of art in themselves, as well as providing inspiration for the artist. The sculptor Henry Moore for example collected bones and flints which he seems to have treated as natural sculptures as well as sources for his own work. Found objects may also be modified by the artist and presented as art, either more or less intact as in the Dada and surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, or as part of an assemblage.

An artist who works with found objects Damien Hirst, a British sculptor, painter, and designer, whose flair for self-publicity has helped him become probably the most famous and controversial British artist of his generation. While still a student at Goldsmiths College, London, he made a name for himself by organizing an exhibition of student work (‘Freeze’, 1988). From his youth, he had a fascination with death, and his most famous work is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991, priv. coll.)(below), consisting of a dead tiger shark balanced and weighted so that it floats in preserving fluid in a large tank made of glass and steel.

Research - Transgression And Taste

Transgressive art aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used in this sense by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985. From an academic perspective, many traces of transgression can be found in any art considered offensive because of its shock value; from the French Salon des Refusés artists to Dada and Surrealism. Philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin and Georges Bataille have published works on the nature of transgression. Transgressional works share some themes with art that deals with psychological dislocation and mental illness.

Transgressive art refers to art that attempts to push boundaries. In an effort at social critique, transgressive artists often use shocking themes and images. Robert Mapplethorpe is one such artist.

Another transgressive artist is Andres Serrano. Serrano worked with photographs and painting, and some of the themes he used were the Ku Klux Klan (like leads to his works related), gun violence, and religion. One of Serrano's most famous artistic series is a photographic series called Object of Desire. Here, Serrano explores themes such as life, death, and religion. One of the most famous photographs in this series is from the point of view of the photographer staring down the barrel of a gun.

Since the late 1990s, a new group of transgressive artists has emerged, such as the Canadian artist Rick Gibson who made a pair of earrings out of human fetuses (below) and ate a piece of human testicle.

During the 1984 exhibition of freeze-dried sculptures in London, an anatomy professor gave Gibson two dehydrated human fetuses. They were 10 weeks in development and had been dehydrated for 20 years. Gibson re-hydrated both fetuses, freeze-dried them and attached them as earrings to a female mannequin head. The sculpture was titled Human Earrings. They were exhibited at the Young Unknowns Gallery in south London in December 1987.

Another artist who uses transgression in their art is Stelarc (born Στέλιος Αρκαδίου Stelios Arcadiou in Limassol in 1946; legally changed his name in 1972), a Cyprus-born Australian performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, whose works focus heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred on his concept that "the human body is obsolete". Until 2007 he held the position of principal research fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently furthering his research at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Stelarc's idiosyncratic performances often involve robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body. In 26 different performances, he has suspended himself in flesh hook suspension, often with one of his robotic inventions integrated. His last suspension performance was held in Melbourne in March 2012.

(Ear And Arm Suspension)