An interesting experiment

[rabidsamfan]

gacked from fernwithy

When you take a famous musician and have him busk in a busy subway station, what happens?

Fascinating article. I'd love to see the experiment repeated. Preferably in Boston, in a train station I'm going through!

Comments

[frankymole.livejournal.com]

I find the analogy with a frameless painting being hidden with aspiring artists' works in a restraunt to be a bit specious. Bach and Schubert cannot be compared with an "abstract". ""Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. " Rightly so - most abstract art could be scribbled or daubed by an infant. Very little of it has any skilful technique, let alone the flair and brilliance require for a musician to interpret one of the great composers.

Controversial? Just calling the emperor's new clothes. Abstract, to me, isn't worth $150, whoever it's by! And too often "artwork" really is more about who painted it when than about the merits of the picture itself.