Teddy Bears Times Tables
There’s an argument to be made for including this item with the rest of the dead teddies where no doubt they would feel comfortably at home. After all, there is no disputing the fact that these are teddies. So many teddies.
What stays my hand from doing so is the presence of the frame. The frame defines and constrains my comprehension of this object. It is insistently demanding, unavoidable, as inescapable as a marker of Art as any amount of paint and pastels, water colours or charcoal.
Of course we have come a long way from requiring all Art to have a frame or indeed for all frames to contain Art. But it is hard not to see a frame and at least consider the possibility that within its confines we may indeed discover Art of some sort or another.
But is this Art, frame or no? It is, after all, quite obviously a learning aid for young minds and not intended to be displayed as Art. Intentionality though… tricky blighter.
Is there an argument to be made for it as Art of the vernacular? Possibly, although there is nothing naïve or amateurish about this production. Despite the care and detail with which each bear has been assembled, it is clearly designed for serial production although, that in itself, doesn’t preclude it from being considered as Art.
More likely it sits in the category of decorative arts, defined as “concerned with the production of objects which are both useful and beautiful”. And who could dispute that, as an object, it is undoubtedly useful as an aide memoire while possessing a certain beauty in its own right, a symmetry of form, an arrangement of colour and composition that pleases the eye and speaks to us, on a certain level, of the human condition.
See more dead art here.