Tidying Up Art: Messy Masterpieces Made Neat & Clean

The Swiss are known for leading an orderly existence, so you can imagine their frustration at grandiose works of German art and the excesses of their French neighbors as well.

Ursus Wehrli is fighting back, organizing everything from parking lots and pine branches to alphabet soup and classic artworks of masters present and past, collected in a series of (humorous but thought-provoking) books about cleaning up all aspects of life.

No one is safe from his exacting eye, precise brushstrokes and poignant photography as he sweeps a Van Gogh bedroom scene out of sight in one stroke and crushes a Postmodern Campbell’s soup can in the next. Jackson Pollock, beware!

 

Not even childrens’ sandboxes or Chinese signs are safe from this process of global reorganization – but while some things gain order from the process, others (like letters) lose meaning and devolve into absurdity. Even the stars themselves are in reach.