40 wild birds play a Gibson Les Paul guitar

Will Gompertz |

This caught my eye. It's funny and oddly compelling.

The film is of an installation by a contemporary French artist called Celeste Boursier-Mougenot. It's very Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who started the conceptual art ball rolling nearly a hundred years ago.

Duchamp pioneered combining everyday materials, philosophical comment and humour, an idea that seeped into places like the 1960s pop group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (they wanted to call themselves the Bonzo Dog Dada band, but worried people wouldn't get it) and Monty Python.

But Duchamp's more radical idea was to introduce chance into the creation of art. In 1913-14 he made 3 Standard Stoppages, a work of art that was the result of the random actions of mechanised contraptions. At the time, he was largely dismissed as a crazy Frenchman, but he inspired an entire avant-garde movement in art as well as the music of John Cage and the choreography of Merce Cunningham. Duchamp was not short of self-confidence, but the idea of adding chance to the creative process was rather humble.

"That's so random" is a common refrain nowadays, referring to a supposedly non-logical thought or event. It was also the clarion cry of the Dadaists, the anti-art, anti-rational early-20th-Century art movement that argued that it was rational thought that led to World War I.

Duchamp was much loved by the Dada movement. I wonder what Dadaists would have made of the internet. It's interesting that, as far as I am aware, no contemporary artist has yet harnessed this extraordinary technology to make a significant artwork. Of course, maybe I'm wrong and am missing something great - do you know of any net-based art works that are worth a look?

Maybe you have made one (an artwork made specifically for the medium, as opposed to a film such as the one above, which uses the net only as a means of dissemination)?

If you, like me, can't find any net-based art of note, why do you think that is? Why, when there's been such a boom in contemporary art around the world, has no artist made the medium of the web his or her canvas? And if someone were to use the net as a medium, as opposed to making an image, or a video, or even an interactive Flash animation, what would the resulting art look, or sound, or feel like?

Duchamp and the Dadaists would have had hours of artistic amusement creating spoof websites, unintelligible Wiki entries and general questioning of the status quo.

Perhaps that is what Celeste Boursier-Mougenot should do next after the installation of his 40 Finches work opens at London's Barbican art gallery on 27 February. Like Duchamp, he seems to understand the creative potential of random acts and non-directed participation. He's already proved in this artwork that while Keith Richards and Eric Clapton might be masters of the Gibson Les Paul, even they cannot play it like 40 wild birds - not a chance.

Trailer for Mel Gibson's new movie, 'Edge of Darkness'

This is Mel Gibson's first big movie since 2002's "Signs," (he also appeared in 2003's "The Singing Detective," which his company produced), and your first reaction seeing this could be, "He is looking kinda old."

But then this puppy kicks in, and you're seeing the intense, dark Mel you used to love — and before you know it, you're on board. This is another entry in this age's long line of revenge movies, a trend started with "Taken," (revenge, rescue, whatever, it's still individuals meting out their own brand of justice), and this one looks like a worthy entry: well-crafted, taut, filled with emotion and action.

And how great is that line "You better decide whether you're hanging on the cross or banging in the nails." It's fresh lines like that could catch on to make this a hit, the way Liam Neeson's speech about his skill set got people talking about "Taken." (And it's a nice little allusion, intentional or not, to Mel's "The Passion of the Christ.")

Permalink

Les Paul: What I've Learned

Buzz up!

In one of his last interviews, the late father of the electric guitar looked back on how being sick made him start playing, how he got sick of playing, and how he wished he could go back to the beginning

By John H. Richardson

Chris Walter/WireImage.com

It's not technique -- it's what you have to say.

I got the mumps. They threw me in a crib so I wouldn't roll out onto the floor. And there's a big bay window in my house, and that window stayed perfectly still until that train started to chug. At a certain speed, I could reach up and feel the pane, and that glass pane would vibrate. I said, Doggone, there's got to be a reason for this. So I go to the kindergarten teacher, and she takes me to the science teacher, and the science teacher takes me to the library and reads it off to me -- "This is called resonance." That was the beginning.

The audience, they're not professionals. They just love music. It isn't necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

You can't go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, "Don't move." And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

When rock came in, people didn't know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn't know what to do. The music was changing. And it's changing now.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

I gave up the guitar in 1965. Didn't want to see a guitar. I'd go out and get drunk. When I came out of the heart surgery, the doc said, "Promise me you'll work hard." I said, "I thought working hard is what got me here." He said, "No, working is what will keep you alive."

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can't go there. So I'm back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

I better go play now.

Interviewed by John H. Richardson, September 1, 2008

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/les-paul-quotes-0109?src=digg#ixzz0OAP8RKFO