It's A Rock, Not Art

Now that's art!

Artists get away with murder when it comes to what they can call art. Trash piles, paint flung at canvases, pet rocks. All have these have been deemed art in some form or another. If that wasn’t enough, we now have this brilliant designer claiming that he is adding something for the societal good/enjoyment with his new project.

An artist is to place a four tonne boulder on top of one of Austria’s highest mountains. Ai Weiwei – who designed the Birds Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics – has been given permission to take the massive rock to the top of the 9,000 ft high Hoher Dachstein peak.

Ai, you designed the Bird’s Nest, one of the most iconic structures of the new millenium and you decide to top that with adding a rock to a mountain? This is your coup de grace? Talk about a sophomore slump.

The artist says the work will highlight the tension between man and his environment. “It will be flown to the peak by helicopter and Ai Weiwei will personally supervise its positioning,” said one official.

If you wanted to highlight tension between man and his environment, why don’t you push it up the hill like Sisyphus? Because the only tension involved with this show of art is the tension in the cords as the rock ascends the side of the mountain, dangling to the underside of a helicopter.

The rubble after an earthquake is a better example of the tension between man and his enviroment, and a better backdrop for you enigmatic artists to claim that the wreckage was somehow art.