15/10/06

Lot 12, "Untitled," by David Hammons

Esta imagen me ha impactado mucho, pero como estoy de un vago subido, me limito a copiar y pegar el texto que la acompañaba.
Parafraseando a Forges: esto del arte va a acabar con el baloncesto. (Forges escribió algo parecido en una viñeta en la que se podía ver a un blasillo con tutú haciendo una pirueta en un campo de furnbo).

Lot 12, "Untitled" by David Hammons, 54 by 60 by 16 inches, 2000.

(...) Perhaps the most amusing work in the auction is Lot 12, "Untitled," by David Hammons (b. 1943), as it depicts a basketball hoop with a mirror as a backboard that is festooned with crystal and brass sconces and candle-like lights and a net of crystal beads. The 54-by-60-by-16-inch work is unique and was executed in 2000. It has an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It sold for $409,500, rather significantly shattering the previous world auction record for the artist of $18,500 set at Christie's in London in November, 1999. Michael McGinnis, the head of Phillips's contemporary art department, said after the auction that the artist's work is difficult to get. "In this work," the catalogue notes, "the basketball hoop was explored as both an icon of black male street cool, as well as a symbol of disenfranchisement and poverty… The surreal fusion of the athletic, common basketball hoop and the pristine, chandelier and crystal elements, not only bring forward the notion of kitsch, but more specifically, make undeniably obvious two very strong clichés in American society: the stereotype that basketball is synonymous with African American males, and the ornate chandelier symbolic of the bourgeoisie 'Wasp' society" (...)

http://www.thecityreview.com/s01pcon1.html