Text Commentary: Charles Ray

Ray revives modesty as an alternative to extravagance and exaggeration, and reintroduces subtlety to repalce assaults upon the senses. He is average. The antithesis of the celebrity artist. I love this guy's philosophy. Just Do things that are going to geta rise out of people. It's amazing. Describingyour life as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich squashed across the tabletop. Who does that? He tweaks the mundane world just enough to enable it to crtoss the threshold into art. Like with his Male Mannequin piece. A manneguin is a na everyday object that we encounter in any department store. Everyone has seen one with out the clothes on it. There is no sexual organ attached to them. The female mannequins have breasts but thats it. So Ray makes a cast of his own penis and uses his own pubic hair to attach to the mannequin to give it back its sexuality. Thats amazing. people find it offensive at first but then realize its just a big joke. So what if he had made a cast of a vagina and attached it to the male mannequin? Would it be recieved with any more disgust? Would people still find it amusing?