Art is an idea...

Since June 11th you'll be surprised to find satellite antennas hanging on balconies in front of appartment buildings in quite a few suburbs of the city of Amsterdam (a.k.a. Satellite City), looking a lot more gay than they normally used to. In suburbs as Geuzenveld/Slotermeer, Osdorp and Bos, and Lommer, where quite a few immigrants are among the residents and satellite antennas are their only connection with their fatherland, elementary school pupils were asked to paint whatever their heart desired on a flexible (plastic?) material that was subsequently used to "dress" the ugly gray of the satellite dishes. The whole initiative was an idea of Peter Doeswijk, a Dutch artist.

Needless to say, the Satellite project drew huge local attention and, as The Netherlands is a forerunner in our Welfare States of the West, the project broke into the international press as well.

Doeswijk does quite a few original works and projects. Another project of his was the decoration of fenches surrounding numerous (and annoying) building construction sites in Amsterdam with posters showing pictures of people passing kisses to the viewers... with implicit message "don't go away... we love you".

This is what seems to be art nowadays. Esthetics is part of it but not the essential. Creating the "artistic" work by the artist him/herself is less of a requirement. In the antennas project it was a bunch of less than ten year olds who did the "painting". Doeswijk was a mere project manager. In the "kisses" project he probably directed a group of photographers to go out and shoot hundreds of pictures with their subjects in the "smack a kiss" pose. The artist is someone who has an "artistic" idea. The key element of that idea is originality. The human race is hungry for creative ideas. Of all the species only humans have this ability to create "novelty"... that is stuff that was never tried before. If these works are furthermore unique, that is to say, they are not mass manufactured for large global consumption, then they are considered as "art". In this sense, each one of us could become an artist! All one needs is an idea that can change the world for ever! Like the iPod...

(Note. When Jonathan Ive, VP of Apple's Product Design, was asked whether the iPod was a work of Art, he replied that Art is a form of self expression whereas the iPod was an object for mass consumption that was optimized to be user friendly and fulfill the needs of its each and every user...)

Doeswijk's poster shown on the right contains 256 "kiss" passing individuals... irrelevant, but in case you wondered... (I did!)