Not Highbrow But Still Art – Chainsaw Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This museum displays the some of the most heralded sculptures in the world. The National Gallery of Art. America’s national museum of art, displaying works of old America, including Native American artwork and sculptures. The Museum of Modern Art. The cutting edge museum displaying more confusing and controversial works of art. However, perhaps the most controversial form of artwork today is not on display in the Museum of Modern Art. Instead, this form of artwork is on display in a Brooklyn firehouse. The form- Chainsaw Art.

Chainsaw artists start with only a large stump of wood. The artist revs up the chainsaw and starts carving away. Though it sounds like a completely crude method of creating art, it is no less crude than works of artists that would splash paint on a canvas. In fact, these chainsaw artists carve detailed sculptures, using special chainsaw tools manufactured for the purpose of chainsaw artistry.

Wood artwork is not something new. There are many pieces of Native American artwork that have been carved out of wood. Totem poles by many of the Pacific coast tribes. Tiki gods by those in the Pacific islands. These Native American pieces of art do have a great amount of natural beauty to them. They were surely carve with great care, with primitive tools, and by true artists. These pieces of art will frequently appear in museums, as they truly are great pieces of art, manufactured in such a primitive form that they are important pieces.

However, viewing the unique antique tools used to make the Native American artwork so important as a criteria for making their artwork art, this must be compared with the brutish force of the unique modern tool to create art, the chainsaw. These chainsaw artists should have their great artwork celebrated as well. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Museum of Art only displays chainsaw art based on the chainsaw’s destructive purpose, through the artistry of Gordon Matta-Clark, who believed art was using the chainsaw the spirit structures in two. Perhaps these elite museums will begin to see the beauty of the artistry in the skilled blade of a chainsaw artist.