For only a measly six G's, you could own artist Matthew Griffin's piece titled "Pickle."
It is an actual pickle, picked off the artist's McDonald's hamburger. He then threw the pickle onto the ceiling of the Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand and called it art.
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If you've got the cash to spend, for an extra $3, they'll even throw in the hamburger itself.
You might be thinking that this all sounds too good to be true. I mean in 2019, Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian," which was a banana duct-taped to a wall, sold for $120,000.
Getting "Pickle" for $6,275 is a steal in comparison.
But you'd be right. It is too good to be true.
Whoever buys this amazing new piece of art will not actually be getting Griffin's pickle from the gallery. Nope, they will be getting "instructions on how to recreate the art in their own space."
Ryan Moore, the director of Fine Arts Sydney, which represents Griffin, explained the piece for all of us troglodytes that might not see a pickle stuck to the ceiling as art, and/or might not want to part with six grand for instructions on how to flick our own pickle onto our own ceiling:
"A humorous response to the work is not invalid – it's OK, because it is funny.
"Generally speaking, artists aren't the ones deciding whether something is art is not – they are the ones who make and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it.
"As much as this looks like a pickle attached to the ceiling – and there is no artifice there, that is exactly what it is – there is something in the encounter with that as a sculpture or a sculptural gesture.
"It's not about the virtuosity of the artist standing there in the gallery throwing it to the ceiling – how it gets there doesn't matter, as long as someone takes it out of the burger and flicks it on to the ceiling.
"The gesture is so pure, so joyful…that is what makes it so good."
Of course, how could I have missed it?
I feel so much more enlightened and upper crust now, I'll be holding my pinky up all day.
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Shout out to subscribers @midiboy and @gwen42 for the heads up about this new achievement in art.
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