What if Rodin’s The Thinker was just a Thought?

This blog is a requiem to the likes of Michael Angelo, Auguste Rodin, Donatello et al. A day when they would be turning, nah even getting up from their graves, masking themselves and heading to Italy to slap one of their tribe!

I’m not a connoisseur of art, nor a collector. But do love pieces of art and indulge in collecting affordable pieces, but these days love or appreciation of art is bordering between insanity and eccentricity. More than the art itself, the way it is being projected / perceived increases its value than the actual workmanship of the same.

Sculptures were synonymous with some great workmanship with dedicated hours, if not months of hard work and detailing. Thus, were born some all-time famous sculptures like David by Michael Angelo, or Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker in the West and some great pieces of art of Gods and Goddesses in the Indian peninsula. However, in the subsequent centuries’ sculptures started becoming bizarre and was acclaimed more for the explanation that came along rather than the workmanship or the craftiness of the piece itself.

Rodin made the first version of The Thinker around 1881. The first full-scale model was ready by 1904 and around 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson pursuing another art, the art of writing came up with a masterpiece of a book called Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which continues to grace the prose books of today. A story of a man drinking up a serum and turning invisible.

Well almost 140 plus years later, that thought of R L Stevenson has crossed the mind of a sculptor who has ventured into producing or rather not producing, and displaying or rather not displaying a sculpture or nothing, and going on to sell that nothing, for something really big. All along, projecting that invisible sculpture as a work of art and giving the following explanation.

 “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”   

He throws in Heisenberg, some might throw in Einstein, others Plato, and sell art that is not art as art. How artful of them! He calls the invisible Sculpture ‘Io Sono’ (which translates to “I am”).  Descarte once said ‘I think, therefore Iam’. Here comes Salvatore Garau, who sells an ‘I am’ even though the ‘I’ doesn’t exist for 18000 US$. It is beyond my reasoning that there were bidders at that auction who pushed the price up for something that they could not see. Salvatore Garau sold an invisible sculpture in a 5 X 5 Foot space. The explanation that followed said “When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms,”

Salvatore Garau sold 25 Sqft of space that you could carry home authenticated by nothing else than a certificate and gaze at all day and imagine a sculpture there all the while spending a fortune on it and be happy of your proud invisible possesion. If it were for me, I would have also asked him to accept his remuneration as a figment of his imagination and explain that the value of money also exists in the same vaccum that holds his sculpture, then it would have been a fair transaction. Had Salvatore Garau been born 140 plus years back Rodin’s Thinker would just have been a thought.

For the uninitiated who have not understood a word so far here is the link to the full story

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181

Well as I said, unfortunately art appreciation has been abused over the years, a banana strapped to a wall or wall painted blue gets passed off as works of art and humanity has reached that obscene levels of stupidity and end up paying astronomical sums for things they don’t understand / see / feel / touch.

If Salvatore Garau could sell his invisible sculpture for US$ 18K, I would also place on auction at Christies, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants of Covid19 for 18 Million Dollars.  At least it’s also a work of invisible art by the Gods above that brought humanity to its knees!

18 Million dollars should help us buy a lot of vaccines!!! Any bidders???