She said she didn't know what it's for. Shouldn't we respect product designers that know exactly what their work is for much more than artists? Almost every item we see around us is carefully designed for its function and we often paid a lot for these items. Shouldn't we respect artists who work for industry under heavy constraints of time, cost and function much more than those producing less useful art? Why or why not?

No. What is 'useful' in art must surely be subjective. We perceive art differently and gain something ( or not!) from art according to our own experiences in life. I think respect is due to artists who while freely expressing themselves, show a high degree of skill and produce a piece which touches us in some way. By saying she doesn' t know what art is for I think she means that it doesn' t really matter why we produce art. There are as many reasons for art as there are artists.

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Course: Tate > Unit 3

Lesson 4: Women's Issues in Art

The Folkestone Mermaid and the model figure

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This video brought to you by Tate.org.uk

In a piece for the Folkestone Triennial 2011, artist Cornelia Parker immortalised one local woman in a sculpture perched upon a seaside rock. Parker selected 38-year-old mother of two Georgina Baker as the model of her version of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid sculpture. Danish artist Edvard Eriksen’s original was cast in 1913, and he created its dainty fairy-tale figure by fusing the physical characteristics of his wife and a ballerina. Parker, on the other hand, modelled her sculpture in the image of a real woman, casting her body in bronze with complete realism, both imbuing her figure with monumentality while turning an idealised character into a real person.

What do you think Parker is encouraging us to think about with this sculpture? Is she defying the notion that only idealised female bodies have a place in art, or perhaps encouraging us to see the everyday as something more heroic?

Read more about Cornelia Parker and explore her work in the Tate collection here.

. Created by Tate.

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Hyta
Posted 8 years ago. Direct link to Hyta's post “She said she didn't know ...”
She said she didn't know what it's for. Shouldn't we respect product designers that know exactly what their work is for much more than artists? Almost every item we see around us is carefully designed for its function and we often paid a lot for these items. Shouldn't we respect artists who work for industry under heavy constraints of time, cost and function much more than those producing less useful art? Why or why not?
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(2 votes)
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- Jackie Hussey Poulouktsi
  Posted 8 years ago. Direct link to Jackie Hussey Poulouktsi's post “No. What is 'useful' in a...”
  No. What is 'useful' in art must surely be subjective. We perceive art differently and gain something ( or not!) from art according to our own experiences in life. I think respect is due to artists who while freely expressing themselves, show a high degree of skill and produce a piece which touches us in some way. By saying she doesn' t know what art is for I think she means that it doesn' t really matter why we produce art. There are as many reasons for art as there are artists.
  Button navigates to signup page
  (3 votes)

Video transcript

I've always what's do something with the little mermaid in Copenhagen a lot of my works about amusing really well worn cliched objects something that's had a past I'm drawn to as long as that pat has a universal key I wanted to use a little mermaid for years and never quite found the right place the right time I was invited to be in this year's folks from tree analogy I thought those injured have all except using a real person not a model to idealized figure and all the houses in folks and will leaflet it and say would you like to be a model I they didn't matter what shape size or age you are I was just looking for somebody who had a spirit I think I'd spotted George in her early on and and I just thought you she had the the present your numbers already statuesque I'm not really a very studio orientated artist you know it's not where I I feel inspired and taught when I really get ideas it's when I'm out and about and having conversations with people or I'm looking at the muse in a museum and I see something or I I'm walking down the beach now I see something and what I'm doing is collecting together fragments of things that somehow build up to a bigger picture the Leaning Tower of Pisa as more looking at it to try and understand what it was about it I found so exciting and getting to talk to the engineers who are trying to save the building and they were going to remove soil from underneath it so excited photos and asked them if I could have the earth when they removed it the earth was put in bags and sent back to me and then I made a hole in all the lumps and i suspended it in a room so it's called subconscious of the monument and somehow that could be a general title for a lot of the works i'll be making me there's almost like a spiral going on in my work I keep coming round to the same point but only different place I'm using bronze for the first time because the original mermaid is made from bronze although it seems like in a very different material this piece is very much part of a continuum I'm hoping that the mermaids will be a kind of subconscious of all those bronzes that are fictionalized I like the idea that the body of somebody who lives in focusin has been sort of imbued with a monumentality yes that's good so she so she can really see a full you know she's a normal 38 year old was two kids adopting the pose of this mythic character I hope there's something quite poignant about somebody still living who's got this monument that she will age of this monument won't well it will age in a different way the material age but the contours will be the same also kind of an amazing waste products on now on man's desire to understand the world it's very hard to determine what what function it has I like that that are but it's very hard to understand what it's for and I don't even need to know what it's for I mean it I know it keeps me just on the verge of authority those you know does its job for me