Invisible Art

It sounds preposterous, but apparently true. The Schulberg Gallery in New York displayed Lana Newstrom’s invisible art and made news on numerous publications for the past few days. And it’s truly remarkable… Only if it were true. This gag was forged by a group of Canadian satirists. Now, in this day and age, it almost seems like anything placed in a gallery with name recognition can become known as ‘art’. Duchamp’s Fountain or Serrano’s Piss Christ were at one time ahead of the game when it came to trends and movements. So invisible art surprisingly seems plausible. The artist, named Lana Newstrom, was featured by hosts of a radio show on Canada’s CBC called This is That, featuring Pat Kelley and Peter Oldring, and even has her own website at LanaNewstrom.com. The picture above has gained some notoriety in the art world as one of the joke’s symbols. The picture, however, is a Photoshopped version of a Bert Stern show in Italy. Similar, non adulterated images from shows such as Stern’s have been used by numerous galleries and museums as generic, ‘people-looking-at-art’ photographs. This isn’t the first time, though, that people have ‘made’ invisible art. James Franco, Hollywoods most famous actor-artist, attempted the stunt in 2011. The only difference is that people actually paid him money in exchange for his works. He and several accomplices even founded the Museum of Non-Visible Art (MONA). This little stunt didn’t really amuse me too much. It could be that it’s not that funny. Or, it could just be that I’m an American… and I just don’t understand the Canadian sense of humor.