'Found'

Criticism

The found object in art has been a subject of polarized debate in Britain throughout the 1990s due to the use of it by the Young British Artists. It has been rejected by the general public and journalists, and supported by public museums and art critics. In his 2000 Dimbleby lecture, Who's afraid of modern art, Sir Nicolas Serota, advocated such kinds of "difficult" art, while quoting opposition such as the Daily Mail headline "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilizing forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all". A more unexpected rejection in 1999 came from artists—some of whom had previously worked with found objects—who founded the Stuckists group and issued a manifesto denouncing such work in favour of a return to painting with the statement "Ready-made art is a polemic of materialism".

My own feelings about 'Found' are that the object of our sight, our vision, our seeking, is to see the visions of our mind, the visions of our world, the seeking of our selves in that which wants us to be blown away by randomness as easily as by our scheming. 

My father, with his fifth grade education and with all his short-comings of seeing only black or white with no shades of grey saw 'Found' his entire life.