[Ads-l] Quote: Art is anything you can get away with. - Marshall McLuhan (1967)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> Isn't the Statue of Liberty art??

I think Marshall McLuhan would say that Liberty Enlightening the World
is art because "art is anything you can get away with", and Frédéric
Auguste Bartholdi got away with it in grand style.

A picture of Niki de Saint Phalle’s giant sculpture is available here:
https://thewomensstudio.net/2018/04/30/niki-de-saint-phalle/
According to this webpage the artwork is titled "She - a Cathedral".

The pertinent pages from the "Medium is the Massage" are available on
this webpage:
https://screeninculture.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/probing-probes/

Scroll down. There is a page that displays the quotation "It is the
business of the future to be dangerous". The following three
double-page spreads display McLuhan's quotation. The order is
scrambled: C, A, B. The picture of the sculpture is a mirror-image of
the picture at thewomensstudio.net.

Garson



> On Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:47 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > > ...best woman in the world.
> >
> > A woman shouldn't be that cold.
> >
> > Otherwise, a similar comment is something like "Art is whatever somebody
> > wants to call art."
> >
> > JL
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 6:44 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> > adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > In 2019 the Italian conceptual artist and provocateur Maurizio
> > > Cattelan used duct tape to attach a banana to the wall of an art
> > > gallery. He dubbed the resultant artwork "Comedian".
> > >
> > > After Cattelan sold the quasi-sculpture for a lucrative price he was
> > > sued by another artist who had previously taped a banana and an orange
> > > to a green background. The presiding judge was inspired to refer to a
> > > humorous definition of art from the 1960s: "Art is anything you can
> > > get away with". The judge credited Canadian communications theorist
> > > Marshall McLuhan with this definition.
> > >
> > > The Wikiquote webpage for McLuhan claims that this remark is in his
> > > book "Understanding Media" (1964), but I accessed that book, and the
> > > quotation was absent.
> > >
> > > Instead, the earliest close match I found appeared in the 1967 book
> > > "The Medium is the Massage" by McLuhan and graphic designer Quentin
> > > Fiore. The quotation was spread across five pages:
> > >
> > > [ref] 1967, The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin
> > > Fiore, Quote Page to 132 to 136, Bantam Books, New York. (Verified
> > > with hardcopy) [/ref]
> > >
> > > [Begin excerpt]
> > > Art is anything you can get away with.
> > > [End excerpt]
> > >
> > > The photographs accompanying the statement showed a massive sculpture:
> > >
> > > [Begin excerpt]
> > > "The biggest and best woman in the world," an 82-foot-long,
> > > 20-foot-high sculpture, in Moderna  Museet, Stockholm. You can walk
> > > around in her.
> > > [End excerpt]
> > >
> > > The Quote Investigator article is here:
> > > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/08/10/art-anything/
> > >
> > > Feedback welcome,
> > > Garson O'Toole
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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