Cheatin’ Art Exhibited at Duke

Money and cheating go hand in hand – now add art to the mix.

An art exhibit was inspired in part by the research that found a “robust relationship between creativity and dishonesty” by Francesca Gino at the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, a behavioral economist who founded Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, the location of the exhibit.

What does the art say to you – about financial planning, the scammers who slink among us, or our money culture? Squared Away picked pieces by two of the exhibit’s 22 artists, who are from North Carolina, Israel and elsewhere. The artists’ explanations are included with their work:

Artist Kerry Cox’s Description of “Keep the Home Fires Burning:”
Keep the Home Fires Burning is an ongoing social and visual experiment concerning the subjective nature of morality and both visual and literary imagery. The work is thematically centered around the 1922 F.Scott Fitzgerald novella, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz, a psychedelic tale of subjective values. Viewers are silently invited to engage with artist and project, leaving open the possibility for varying degrees of participation and the creation of various objects of ephemera documenting moments of contemplation. Results will be measured and displayed closer to close of the exhibition.

Artist R.T. Slagle’s Description of “Artistic Liberty:”
This piece addresses the relationship between the artist, his creation and the audience by questioning the artist’s honesty with regard to the portrayal of his subject, and the intended/unintended consequences of any manipulation of the subject on the viewership. Using Nena Leen’s photograph “The Irascibles” (1951), the image is manipulated to include the likeness of the artist – calling into question the right of ownership of the image, its authenticity and the purpose of the manipulation.