Bad dog? Good art? The poetics of peeing
We all know that when a dog pees on something, it’s generally not an opinion that he’s expressing.
Still, there are those who see poetic justice in Richard Jackson’s oversized sculpture, “Bad Dog,” a 24-foot black Lab who’s urinating on the side of the Orange County Museum of Art, a building many see — despite all the fine artwork inside — as artistically lacking on the outside.
The work by Jackson adorns one facade of the museum in Newport Beach, where an exhibition of his work – ”Richard Jackson: Ain’t Painting a Pain” — is underway.
The oversized pup, visible from blocks away, is made of fiberglass panels. Inside, Jackson installed a vat of yellow paint that continuously shoots, via hidden hoses, a stream onto the side of the building.
The peeing dog, and Jackson’s indoors exhibit, will remain on display through May 5, 2013
According to the nearby plaque, the “guileless dog unwittingly points to the sometimes rigid institutional constraints that can frustrate artists and audiences alike.”
My Modern Met describes the project as “one of Jackson’s many ‘painting machines’ that excretes pigments in an unusually creative fashion.”
Posted by jwoestendiek February 25th, 2013 under Muttsblog.
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