Docent Blog "Bits of Frit" | Museum of Glass

Discussion: Wim Delvoye

By Ryan Branchini, November 24, 2007 | Hot Topics, Learn About Art, Discussion

Much of Wim Delvoye’s art relies on a strategy of provocatively juxtaposing - high and low culture, fine art and crafts, celestial ideas and agrarian traditions, transcendental aspirations and crude bodily functions - to expose the irony and paradox of our art-historical legacy and culture.

How do we define what is high and/or low culture? Fine art vs. crafts?

Is Delvoye exposing the irony of our “art-historical legacy and culture” or has he become apart of that world?

Wim Delvoye (Belgian, born 1965 in Wervik, Belgium)
Erato (Detail)
from Nine Muses Series, 2001–2002
Steel, radiographic slides, lead, and glass
78 3/4 x 31 ½ in. (200 x 80 cm) each
Courtesy of the artist

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Donna Schultz 12.1.2007 | 12.53pm

Great topic for discussion! I don’t necessarily have any profound answers to the questions you pose, but
Donna Schultz 12.1.2007 | 1.00pm

(OK, that got posted before I finished!–as I was saying . . .) but I know that I am concerned that our schools in particular sometimes seem to be confused between what should rightly be considered "pop culture" and what is truly art. I guess, for me, something that is from the realm of high art is something that enables one to transcend in spirit and be lifted, so to speak, to a sense of an enhanced or enlarged perception of the world, the cosmos, and one’s place in it. Pop culture, on the other hand, serves more the purpose of entertainment (though it also sort of documents our time and therefore helps to define us as a society or a culture.)

Discussion: Wim Delvoye

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