Clyde's underwear art

The latest scandal in Salisbury, NC is a local news story about Clyde Overcash, an artist, who is pressing charges against Anne Caldwell Cave, the director of the Rowan Arts Council, because he hung a pair of underwear in front of his building and called it art — and she took it down.

This reminds me of a course I took in college.  It was a philosophy seminar called “The Philosophy of Art.”

Dr. Helm, our professor, was an extremely kind, elderly gentleman.  In fact, I thought he was pretty old.  A little research reveals that he was actually only four or five years older than I am now.

Here’s a bit about Dr. Helm and some photos.

Dr. Helm infuriated me with some of his ideas:

‘A well prepared meal is a work of art,’ he would say.  I couldn’t relate to this.  Most of my meals at the time came from slightly raunchy restaurants, or our absolutely raunchy kitchen in the house I shared with other students, or from the Wake Forest cafeteria, a.k.a. “The Pit.”

‘A soap opera episode, in some cases, can be a work of art,’ Dr. Helm would also say.

This also didn’t seem to make sense to me.  My soap opera experience was based on time I spent visiting my grandmother while she watched.  The story never seemed to go anywhere!

Of course these statements were meant to provoke discussion around the seminar table, and they did.

I don’t remember much content from a class that took place 32 years ago, but I remember the emotion quite well.  I was frustrated.  It was a seminar.  The others in the class were upper class philosophy majors and I wasn’t.  The other students were better at the lingo and referred to other philosophers.  I fancied myself a poet (a kind of artist) — and although I loved philosophy, I wasn’t much of a talker on the subject.  So I mostly just sat there, wanting to participate but too afraid, and listened.

But I do have my opinion about the underwear.  In my view, it depends on whose underwear it is.  If it’s a pair of my underwear, hanging from a tree in front of my house, then it’s just underwear.  I’m not that kind of artist.

Clyde Overcash, on the other hand, consistently produces visual art.  I own a number of his paintings.  His underwear, hanging in front of his gallery — is certainly a work of art.

It may stink, but it’s still a work of art.

The fact that someone in the art world assumes the role of art police and censors the work proves his point even further:  it’s a provocative work of art.

Maybe the whole thing is staged media hype — a publicity stunt for Salisbury artists.

In a phone call this evening, I reported the incident to my son (a painter and musician).  He likes to get the latest updates from Salisbury.

“That’s a juicy story,” he said.

When I told him I was blogging about it, he suggested I allude to Duchamp’s Fountain.