The Catalyst

By Kelli Konicek, Features Editor

Martin Creed is undoubtedly an intelligent, respectable man. 40-something years old, he has already had several of his artistic sculptures/ pieces on display in the highly acclaimed Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. I can personally attest to this fact, albeit not happily.

I begged my mother to let me see MOMA during my spring break vacation to the East Coast. I longed to be in close proximity to a Dali painting (“Persistence of Memory,” AKA the melting clocks painting, was out “on tour,” to my great dismay). I itched to let my eyes settle around the chaotic paint splatters of a Jackson Pollock. When I finally got to tour MOMA, I was pleasantly tickled to nearly desecrate an Andy Warhol painting by almost sticking my elbow through it. For a time, I thought MOMA was a place of pure, artistic wonder. I should have probably finished the tour before drawing that conclusion.

I stood in a sector of the museum- mouth agape, confused, dismayed, frightened. I was hunched in front of Martin Creed’s piece, “Work No. 327: A sheet of paper crumpled up and flattened out.”

The title leaves no room for speculation, ladies and gentlemen. Behind a sheet of protective glass, tacked upon the wall, was a piece of “crumpled paper on paperboard,” as MOMA’s website so eloquently describes it. Holding back vomit induced from shock, I reeled at the notion that a slab of crumbled paper shared a wall in an art museum with Van Gough’s paintings.

By all means, chastise my close-minded perception. “Art is subjective!” you may angrily retort. “One cannot judge the merit of art; it’s too relative!” For most cases, I would passionately agree. Art, in its truest sense, is meant to convey different feelings to different people. It’s meant to tread along paths that other pictures and sculptures and murals have not had the pleasure of trekking. Art is meant to make people feel livid, blissful, despairing; any emotion that a walking corpse isn’t likely to feel. That is one of art’s many reasons for existing.

I contemplated this as I glared at the bit of crumpled paper which was definitely more expensive than a good steak dinner, and probably more than a small vehicle. Martin Creed tricked MOMA into treating a piece of garbage like piece of art. I grew angrier, shouting at the heavens to rid the world of this injustice…

Let us end said narrative before it gets too ugly. It may be glaringly obvious that Creed probably meant to conjure the very contempt I was aiming at his masterpiece. It may be obvious I was doing exactly what art is supposed to make a human mind do: feel. It was not so obvious to me at the time that for this very purpose, Martin Creed’s pathetic un-wadded ball of paper wasn’t so much art but the clever messenger through which artistic interpretation could shine. Creed’s use of situational irony made me feel the same feelings one might experience looking at Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon:” a sense of discord, of mild discomfort and perhaps even anger.

I must hand it to Martin Creed: he is an exceedingly crafty fellow. As much as I’d like to say I too could have crumpled up that wad of paper and been a famous artist, somehow I know that such isn’t the case.

Then again, it’s only a stupid bit of paper.