These are the U.K. band, The Yardbirds. Circa 1967. The bands not that important. The fact that Jeff Beck is in the band is important. The fact that this is an excerpt from Antonioni’s Blow-Up is important. To summarize: everything up to this point is en masse important. Because Jeff Beck is important. The guitar that he smashes onstage and the neck of that guitar become important. What is interesting — is although David Hemings successfully hunts and gathers this artifact from a cultural event; he finds out, once he’s gotten away with it that it’s no longer relevant. Once context is removed, you need the accompanying memory to complete the circle or to make it contextual. That “fill-in-the-blank” device works better in a painting; which, too, is abstract but capable of transmitting some notion of context to the viewer. A lot of things around us seem valuable — until you remove the context. It’s like a type of thought bias, if done correctly.
That’s the reality.
Then, you have to ask some hard questions: Why do I have this? Who is this person? Why am I here? Was this important at some point?
“For something to be art, it by definition, has to be useless.” – Emanuel Kant
Prudence Hemmings was my next door neighbor in Sun Valley, ID.