The Art of Making Art Without Lifting a Finger

The chapter, “The Art of Making Art without Lifting a Finger,” was a very interesting read. I must say that it was successful at modifying my views. It is all about life as art or art in other forms besides objects. It starts off talking about an artist named Ray Johnson, killed himself as his final art piece. This of course, did not sit right with me. I mean the guy took his own life and called it art. I think that is taking art too far, for sure. My initial reactions did change after continuing to read however. I was persuaded to see why it could be called art and also maybe a little bit as to why he would do it (based off of speculation from friends who actually really did not even know him). So I give kudos to the author for that. However, it still seems incredibly wrong to view someone’s death as art. Art is something that people enjoy, even if it is ugly or scary, we like it for whatever our reasons may be. To find pleasure out of this man killing himself seems wrong. I mean he thought a body floating in the water was beautiful, but if a person sees someone dead floating in the water they don’t stop and pause and say, “that is the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” they freak out. People don’t even reflect back on it and say that. So, although I understand the point, I think that is too extreme.

I also loved the dada movement that the author brings up when talking about Duchamp. Many people hate that Duchamp took a urine, signed it, and called it art. But I thought it was brilliant. He was making a statement, along with other dada artists of that time. There is a difference between a real artist who is making a statement and a fake artist who only does shocking things to get rich and famous. I felt like some of the artists that the author speaks of were some of the fake artists.

I also found the end half about Yoko Ono very interesting. I did not know much about her, besides that she married one of the Beatles and supposedly broke them up. I found her work to be very interesting. The way that she removed herself from the work seemed different to me than other artists who did like Warhol. It led me down a cognitional path of the meaning behind one removing themselves from their work. An artist who has something to say about feeling unimportant or forgot, maybe a bad childhood, etc could use a similar idea of removing themselves from the work because of those reasons and it could be very powerful. I also loved the idea of her piece called “cut piece” which was making a statement about feminism before feminism was really a concept. But the image of people cutting off her clothes as she lays there is very powerful.

Overall, I was happy that I read this because I felt like I learned interesting things. But more so, I felt like it expanding my mind as an artist. It gave me new ideas and changed some older ones to some degree.