Friday, February 15, 2008

Fun with scissors: A little art hoax

Sometimes a hoax isn't all bad. There's an email circulating about a contest at Washington, DC's Hirshhorn Museum wherein artists were required to use nothing except a pair of scissors and a single piece of paper. The email includes images of some really impressive stuff .  (Impressive especially to someone like myself who can barely make a string of paper dolls. They always have these weird oblong heads.)

Great, except that it never happened. The works exist, but there was never a contest, the Hirshhorn was never involved, and all the pieces were done by a single artist, Peter Calleson. First clue is that the email misspelled the name of the Hirshhorn (gotta have all three of those h's); second is that the Hirshhorn's website bears no mention of any such contest. But I have to admit that I enjoyed the pieces regardless. Here are a few of my favorites.















The problem with this hoax is that it deprives a very talented person of credit for his work. I really don't know why someone would want to do this. But at any rate, my hat is off to Peter Calleson. I bet he can make paper dolls with round heads too.

Happy Friday. Have a nice weekend!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those are amazing!! But like you, I don't get it. Why the hoax? The art is wonderful in and of itself. Have a great weekend, and thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

THAT IS SO COOL, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE IT WOULD TAKE A LOT OF PACIENTS!!! ME AND PACIENTS DO NOT GO TOGETHER

Anonymous said...

Wow (she types with her mouth hanging open in amazement) they are brilliant, thank you so much for sharing them.

Jenny, Melbourne

RJM said...

You're right that these are not from a contest and are by a single artist - which seems pretty obvious. You misspell HIS name, however: it's CALLESEN - two E's to go with Hirshhorn's 3 Hs - and you fail to link to his site. I wonder why?! (And I wonder how you found him? Thank you for doing it!) Anyway, here is the real artist's site:
http://www.petercallesen.com/index/index2.html
which has many more marvelous papercuts, and other excellent works of art, too.
Roberta J. Morris