Take a look at that sculpture in the gallery above. First of all, you’re probably asking, “what the heck is that?” But at the same time, maybe you also feel a certain compulsion to understand it because of its setting. It is in an art gallery, after all.
The truth is, I shot this (literal) garbage with my phone camera about an hour before writing this. I was walking with my son (and our dog) and we looked at the mangled mess, apparently once a piece of furniture. My dog may have peed on it, I can’t recall.
We talked about whether people would consider it art if they saw it in a gallery (which I fabricated in the above image using Midjourney AI.) I was inspired by this, so when I got home, I decided to compose a scene with the broken chair in it–taken out of its original context.
Now be honest: were you like woah, this is kinda interesting. I wonder what it means? Or were you like, “what is this atrocity?”
Here’s the original photo of the broken chair for comparison:
photo by author
Now, if a smashed chair in a gallery can be even considered to be art, then what about when it was in its natural habitat? Is that art? Does the “sculpture” say more in a pristine gallery then it does in a messy outdoor park? Or vice versa?