Peter P.
04-04-2008, 06:34 PM
I don't follow along with all the Twizzler stuff that goes on here but I thought I'd pass along an article that appeared in Today's Hartford Courant, Connecticut section.
Here's the link, which includes photos:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctyaletwizzler0404.artapr04,0,7426613.story
And, in case the link can't be accessed or times out, here's the article:
NEW HAVEN — - The students worked methodically, laying out rings of Twizzlers at the foot of "Biolith," a marble sculpture that greets visitors as they walk into the Yale Center for British Art.
The red candy offering was more than just kitsch. It was meant to make people rethink how they move through a museum to view Great Art. The goal: to steer visitors off the beaten path.
"We want to shock people and make them uncomfortable," said Haley Hogan, a breathless art history student at Yale who organized the installation.
For two hours Thursday night, a museum known for its staid British portraiture turned over two floors of its landmark building to a team of student performance artists called The Interventionists, armed with 4 pounds of Twizzlers.
Their choice of candy was deliberate. They picked Twizzlers — those artificially flavored, mass-produced ropes of sugar — for their association with licorice. Not only does licorice have medicinal properties — it helps heal ulcers — but it was also a sacred food in ancient Egypt, one of the places where Western art originated.
Clad in white robes, Hogan and her followers deposited 1,080 plastic-wrapped Twizzlers at the foot of J.M.W. Turner's "Dort," a 17th-century landscape painting; Jacob Epstein's "Venus," a modern sculpture; and other works. They labored silently, like monks in prayer. And when the offerings were over, they collected the candy for the audience to eat. It had taken nine months of planning to create an improvisational effect.
Only later did Hogan learn that another performer had "intervened" during her performance — wearing only a pair of New Balance running shoes. Security guards confronted the young man, a Yale student, near Turner's watery Dutch landscape after realizing the man was not, at least officially, one of the artists.
The student put on running shorts and a T-shirt to talk to security and then police. Elaborating on his artistic aspirations, and throwing in a quote from Jackson Pollock, he managed to talk his way out of an arrest.
"What luck!" he said outside the museum later. "I guess even the police know good art."
Here's the link, which includes photos:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctyaletwizzler0404.artapr04,0,7426613.story
And, in case the link can't be accessed or times out, here's the article:
NEW HAVEN — - The students worked methodically, laying out rings of Twizzlers at the foot of "Biolith," a marble sculpture that greets visitors as they walk into the Yale Center for British Art.
The red candy offering was more than just kitsch. It was meant to make people rethink how they move through a museum to view Great Art. The goal: to steer visitors off the beaten path.
"We want to shock people and make them uncomfortable," said Haley Hogan, a breathless art history student at Yale who organized the installation.
For two hours Thursday night, a museum known for its staid British portraiture turned over two floors of its landmark building to a team of student performance artists called The Interventionists, armed with 4 pounds of Twizzlers.
Their choice of candy was deliberate. They picked Twizzlers — those artificially flavored, mass-produced ropes of sugar — for their association with licorice. Not only does licorice have medicinal properties — it helps heal ulcers — but it was also a sacred food in ancient Egypt, one of the places where Western art originated.
Clad in white robes, Hogan and her followers deposited 1,080 plastic-wrapped Twizzlers at the foot of J.M.W. Turner's "Dort," a 17th-century landscape painting; Jacob Epstein's "Venus," a modern sculpture; and other works. They labored silently, like monks in prayer. And when the offerings were over, they collected the candy for the audience to eat. It had taken nine months of planning to create an improvisational effect.
Only later did Hogan learn that another performer had "intervened" during her performance — wearing only a pair of New Balance running shoes. Security guards confronted the young man, a Yale student, near Turner's watery Dutch landscape after realizing the man was not, at least officially, one of the artists.
The student put on running shorts and a T-shirt to talk to security and then police. Elaborating on his artistic aspirations, and throwing in a quote from Jackson Pollock, he managed to talk his way out of an arrest.
"What luck!" he said outside the museum later. "I guess even the police know good art."