Magazine cover and feature article about my sculpture, “Exhibitionist Fly”. Click on the image to see the high-rez, readable version.
And here is just the picture of the sculpture itself.
Does BIGGER make better art?
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
Your art/post gave me a perspective on a couple of issues
1. Art that can be done by anyone becoming elitist
Hirst has often been criticised as an artist whose work could be done by anyone because not only is it banal, he doesn’t even make it himself. His response to the criticisms is, “But you didn’t did you.” I’ve always felt it was incomplete criticism and a deceptive response because although the art could be done by anyone, only Hirst had something like Charles Saatchi funding him, the connections with a gallery to display and publicists able to engage the media to write stories that stated it was both controversial and genius.
With your work, you are actually illustrating that the idea can be done by anyone and is being done by many people but the funding to actually turn the idea into physical form and media connections to promote it is what separates yours from Hirst and co.
2. If art is about the idea does it matter it the idea lacks a tangible form?
I, like most people, have ever engaged with the work of Hirst and Koons via the internet and a TV documentary. I have no idea what it is like to stand in the presence of their installations and sculptures. Considering that their art has become famous by the electronic mediums (not physical medium) is it really necessary for the art to actually exist?
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Exactly right! When the team of artists produce their work for them they say it’s the idea that is important. If you say anyone could have the idea they say you didn’t, and they presume you couldn’t. They also assume you don’t get their work, in the same way one might not get the philosophy of Wittgenstein or subatomic physics. In reality it’s the opportunity to make such art, the money, and the connections that make it possible. When they say it’s the “idea” they shoot themselves in the foot, because anyone, someone like me, can have the same sort of ideas. It’s really not hard to see a giant balloon dog and think, “what about giant marshmallow candy, or sculptures made of hair clips”? You see a giant McCarthy pile of shit, and it’s takes a few seconds to think of giant piles of barf draped over buildings, or what about making swimming pool sized pigeon shits and putting them outside the museum on cars and the street? The ideas come fast and easy.
Why doesn’t Hirst make a giant dissected frog sculpture, or an eviscerated bull? Ah, to paint the organs with glossy paint! Come on? Where are the life sized soap sculptures, either of cars or as they make in Thailand, intricate carvings of flowers. Koons could have his crew make absolutely stunning marble copies of soap sculptures.
Let’s make a giant toilet the size of a football field, but which allows people to walk around the seat and look inside. What’s more, it flushes. Seeing a flush on that scale, and the movement of water would be very impressive. Go Paul McCarthy! Go!
By appropriating the look of magazines and galleries and art spaces, I’m subverting the authority of the art world to create the same aesthetic without the money and connections. It seems like most people who see these pieces don’t know it’s a joke. People comment on Sigmund’s dong size or that they remember him from childhood TV, but not that the whole thing is a send up.
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It would be interesting to see if you could get your article published in an art magazine as a work of art and then have it reviewed by a critic in the same magazine.
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I consider that one a kind of art piece, because I designed and wrote it all, and it looks kinda’ cool. Maybe someone will review it in a real magazine someday. I also made a fake Koons, and a giant Sigmund the Sea Monster Dong. Working on stenciling over Banksy’s. Guess it’s a prank art series.
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