Don’t panic, but we’re about to get all highbrow on you. Well, sort of. Today we put to you the question: What is art? The glorious colourful splashes of Monet hanging in the Louvre? Tracey Emin’s unmade bed? Michelangelo’s David? That doodle you just did on the phone to your boss? Yep, these are all brilliant examples of art (sort of), but art comes in all sorts of unusual forms. Here’s our rundown of the most weird and wonderful places in the world to ramp up your culture credentials.
Art on Track, Chicago
Image by mootown
Every year a Chicago Transit Authority train car is given over to a local artist for a full-body makeover. For one night the train makes its way around the track, giving people a chance to see artwork in motion! It’s exposure for the artist and makes the daily commute that much more pleasant for the general public – now that’s what we call a concrete jungle.
The Underbelly, Paris
Image by walkandy
‘The Underbelly,’ organized in Paris four stories below the street, turned dank, unused and abandoned tunnels into a very very secret art gallery. The only people who were aware of it were the ten participating artists, three organizers, two photographers and one writer. Pretty exclusive, huh? By all accounts it got pretty stressful – trying to breath in an airless tunnel will do that to an artist.
Prada Store, Marfa, Texas
Image by CosmoPolitician
Yes, that is a Prada storefront, surrounded by endless Texan desert! Prada Marfa is a permanently installed sculpture by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, situated on U.S. Route 90, and about 37 miles northwest of the city of Marfa. The original concept was supposed to see the installation decay naturally, fading back into the natural landscape – but the art piece was vandalized almost immediately, with all items inside stolen, so it was repaired. The products within the storefront are actual Prada merchandise, selected from the 2005 fall/winter collection by Miuccia Prada herself! Since the break in, the products now have fake bottoms and higher security measures. Very sensible.
Life Below the Surface – Florida
Image by Andreas Frank
In 2009, photographer Andreas Frank dove down to the depths of the Vandenberg, a US missile tracking ship that had sunk off the coast of Key West, Florida. He used these images from the wreckage as a canvas for an underwater world that never actually existed, digitally creating a civilization on board. To show his exhibition, he Frank returned to the site of the original photographs, turning the sunken ship into a gallery of sorts. To see it, gallery goers dove underwater seven miles off the coast – now that’s an art fan if we ever heard of one.
Nuclear Bunker art
A Bosnian nuclear bunker, created during the Cold War to help protect the Yugoslavian president from a nuclear strike now houses artworks from 44 artists from 18 countries! It was the largest military complex in former Yugoslavia at 6,500 square meters in size and took 4.5 billion U.S. dollars to complete – and now it houses a cacophony of spectacular art to commemorate the past.
