yazadjal.com

This is for the football fanatics.

On Tuesday, Britain’s National Portrait Gallery was unveiling a “portrait” of the Real Madrid midfielder, comprising a one hour and seven minute-long video film of him asleep - alone - in a bed.

The film shows a close-up Beckham, naked from the waist up, snoozing directly in front of the camera, almost giving the viewer the impression of being in the same bed.

“It’s an absolutely beautiful portrait and it gives us an image of Beckham that we have never seen before,” said Sarah Howgate, the London museum’s contemporary art curator, who helped commission the work.

Whatever. It just sounds terribly boring to see an hour long film of a guy sleeping. When I was in Cologne two years ago, there was a 5 hour film being shown in one of the top modern art museums, the Museum Ludwig. It was of a half naked guy doing rather silly things. I sat there for a while largely because I was tired walking around admiring the other works of art and enjoyed a 15 minute snooze thanks to the charms of the video!

This “boring video as art” seems to be an important component of the avant garde art movement in Europe, where indulgent artists have a free reign thanks to government grants. Wonder how many such videos would be made if the artists had to raise funds themselves by getting people to buy this “art”.

Here is what I had written earlier on this theme.