Rob Pruitt's 101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself
This August, Rob Pruitt takes over the window of MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, with 101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself. Conceived as an irreverent list of instructions, the work is a reiteration of his 1999 project. Returning twenty-five years later, his ideas have been reimagined by artificial intelligence.
See below the new iterations – and compare them to the original list at this link here.
1. Disposable Art – Create an artwork that’s designed to be discarded, like a piece of cake with icing that melts away.
2. Art of Indifference – Create a piece that demands no emotional reaction—something that’s purposely bland or without purpose.
3. Living in the Moment – Document something happening in real-time, but only show a blurred or distorted view to capture the essence of now.
4. Create a Paper Trail – Write a story in tiny, inconspicuous handwriting and leave the pages scattered around your neighborhood.
5. Self-Imposed Silence – Spend an entire day in silence, then represent your internal dialogue with a drawing.
6. Art as Non-Action – Display a space where nothing physically happens, but have people “perform” their expectations of action.
7. Accidental Art – Set up an environment where accidents are bound to happen (spilled paint, knocked-over sculptures) and present it as art.
8. The Absence of Touch – Present an artwork that can only be experienced by looking but not touching, highlighting the tension between the desire to interact and the concept of preservation.
9. Art from Things Forgotten – Collect lost items (gloves, keys, etc.) and photograph them as if they have an untold story.
10. Overexposure – Take a photo of the same subject for an entire day, adjusting the light every time.
11. Reverse Graffiti – Clean off dirt or dust in a public place to create an image on the surface, essentially "erasing" the grime.
12. The Disappearing Artwork – Create an artwork using a medium that fades or evaporates, like chalk or ice.
13. Anti-Art – Display a blank canvas with a title that represents something deeply meaningful.
14. Unseen Sculpture – Create a sculpture that only exists conceptually—describe it in words or ideas, but it’s never physically made.
15. Audience-Curated Art – Place a blank canvas in a public space and ask people to leave
their “marks” on it, but with the condition they cannot sign it.
16. Beauty in the Mundane – Photograph a mundane object (like a paperclip or pen) in dramatic lighting to elevate its importance.
17. The Symbol of Something Else – Create a series of objects that represent an abstract concept like "time," but through totally unrelated items.
18. Zero-View Art – Set up an artwork that is purposely hard to see, forcing the viewer to work to experience it.
19. Time Travel Art – Recreate an artwork in an era’s style that hasn’t happened yet.
20. Unfinished Business – Present an unfinished painting or sculpture and leave clues about how it was supposed to end.
21. Digital Deterioration – Take a file or digital image and repeatedly degrade or corrupt it, showing the process of decay.
22. The Unmade Bed – Take a picture of an unmade bed every day for a month, exploring the passage of time through a simple act of daily life.
23. Mock Museum – Build a small “museum” in your living room and curate items that are personal, insignificant, or absurd.
24. Contextualizing the Ordinary – Take something extremely ordinary, like a kitchen utensil, and present it in a fine art context with an elaborate backstory.
25. People-Watching Art – Capture a single person’s actions over time, but show only one still frame per moment, leaving the rest to interpretation.
26. The Missing Piece – Create a puzzle and purposely leave one piece out, making the piece’s absence part of the artwork.
27. Art from Repetition – Recreate an action repeatedly and document the variations: eating the same meal every day for a week, walking the same route, etc.
28. Collective Unconscious – Place a box in a public area and invite people to leave something of personal value inside, creating a "collective artwork."
29. Art via Constraints – Create a work under highly restrictive rules, such as using only one color or one material.
30. Art from Existence – Document your day-to-day life in a journal, but every entry should be a piece of art in its own right.
31. Performance of the Ordinary – Act out a regular day as a performance, exaggerating every mundane task to a dramatic degree.
32. Concealed Art – Hide a piece of artwork in plain sight, where it can only be discovered through careful observation.
33. Disguised Creativity – Use masking tape to outline a “hidden” picture on a wall that only becomes visible when the tape is removed.
34. Memory as Art – Take a photograph and distort it with heat, water, or texture to represent a fading memory.
35. Object as Metaphor – Present an object with no explanation, allowing the viewer to create their own meaning.
36. Ephemeral Meaning – Create a text-based art piece where the meaning changes every day (like a quote that shifts depending on the calendar date).
37. Art as Question – Present a question and create an artwork without attempting to provide an answer.
38. Liminal Spaces – Take photos of spaces in transition (an unfinished building, a door half open) and present them as moments of potential.
39. Interruption – Create art that’s meant to be interrupted or disrupted by the viewer (knock over a sculpture, rip a painting).
40. Transitory Installations – Create a piece that exists in one location for only a short period, emphasizing the fleeting nature of both art and time.
41. The Object of Rejection – Display an object that’s commonly discarded or overlooked (like a broken chair) and elevate it to art status.
42. Language of the Body – Create a series of movements or gestures as art, without words, letting the body communicate.
43. Light as Message – Use light projections to create an art installation, allowing the viewer to step into a shifting visual environment.
44. The Minimalist Home – Create a space with no furniture but use everyday items like clothes and appliances to form a “living installation.”
45. Lost Artifacts – Create a fictional “archaeological find,” displaying things that have no real origin or historical context.
46. Art as Invitation – Create art that actively invites people to interact and change its form (paintings you can scratch off or move pieces).
47. The Mystery Box – Place an item in a box, and encourage people to imagine its significance or function based on a single clue.
48. Social Commentary in the Ordinary – Create a piece that reflects societal issues but through a seemingly banal or trivial object.
49. Cultural Collage – Make a collage from cultural artifacts, like newspapers, signs, or postcards, but disassemble them into non-culturally identifiable fragments.
50. Abstract Routine – Capture the first step of any daily ritual (like waking up) and represent it abstractly.
51. Home as Art – Redefine your home as a “gallery” by intentionally arranging objects and furniture into an art display.
52. Transient Art – Create something that naturally deteriorates over time (e.g., sand drawings or ice sculptures) and document its decay.
53. Interactive Urban Art – Build an installation in a public park and encourage the public to add their own creations or modifications to it.
54. Unconventional Drawing Tools – Draw with things other than pencils, like dirt, fabric, or food.
55. Unseen Sound – Create an invisible art installation using only sound—document the absence of visual material.
56. Re-Contextualize Everyday Items – Take something as basic as a toothbrush or a mop and create an artwork by photographing it in an unexpected, artistic context.
57. Identity Through Objects – Curate a collection of personal items that tell a story about you without you ever being seen.
58. Found Materials in Nature – Use only natural materials you find in your environment (rocks, twigs, leaves) to create a piece of art.
59. Life Without Color – Document an entire day without using color, making all your experiences in black and white.
60. The Art of a Single Moment – Record one single, fleeting moment (a sneeze, a laugh, a footstep) and present it in an exaggerated way.
61. Social Fabric – Use discarded clothing to create a tapestry or blanket that reflects the idea of human connection through fabric.
62. Exaggeration of Scale – Take small, mundane objects and blow them up to a gigantic size or shrink large objects to an almost imperceptible size.
63. Art as Escape – Create a piece that allows people to escape into it physically, like a small room filled with objects designed to make the viewer forget reality.
64. Interaction with Nature – Set up an art installation in a natural setting, and allow it to interact with the environment (winds, rain, etc.) and change over time.
65. Temporal Art – Document a process over time (like the growth of a plant or the decay of a fruit) and create a “time-lapse” artwork.
66. Unnoticed Things – Photograph something nobody notices but everyone passes by every day—such as the underside of a bench or a forgotten corner.
67. Social Media as Art – Use your social media platforms as a canvas to express a daily evolving artwork.
68. Re-Imagining Tools – Create new, conceptual tools that serve no practical purpose other than to explore their form and function.
69. Shifting Contexts – Take something familiar and change its context completely (e.g., a park bench displayed as a gallery piece).
70. Acting as Art – Use performance art to act out something from your life you’ve never done before (like acting out a memory you’ve never shared).
71. Perspective Play – Take two identical objects and present them in ways that make them appear radically different.
72. Delayed Reaction – Create an artwork that only reacts to external stimuli after a significant delay (like a painting that “responds” to weather).
73. Reflections on Reflection – Create a series of mirrored objects, but distort them slightly to suggest an imperfect reflection of self.
74. Art as Overload – Present a sensory overload (excessive noise, light, movement) that overwhelms the viewer.
75. Art of Return – Create an artwork that is meant to disappear or be erased by the artist over time.
76. Public Participation – Create an open-ended piece that invites passersby to add their thoughts or alterations, evolving the piece through public input.
77. Reversed Functions – Place something that normally has one function (a pencil sharpener) in a context where it has no function at all (as a sculpture).
78. Concept of Fragility – Create an art piece that can’t be touched or moved, emphasizing the fragility of art.
79. Art as Confusion – Present an artwork that purposefully confuses or challenges the viewer’s assumptions about what art should be.
80. Art on the Move – Take art to the streets—create a temporary installation that travels to different locations each day.
81. Forgettable Art – Create something so ordinary and forgettable that it challenges the concept of how art should stand out.
82. Silent Conversations – Create a work that relies on gestures and non-verbal communication.
83. Unclear Boundaries – Use lines to create an art piece where the borders between objects or spaces aren’t clear.
84. Wasted Space – Create an art piece that draws attention to empty or wasted spaces, such as abandoned lots or empty corners.
85. Language Without Words – Use abstract symbols or signs to communicate an idea without any recognizable language.
86. Bottling a Moment – Capture a feeling, sound, or moment in a bottle and leave it in a public place.
87. Object Transmutation – Turn a simple object into something totally unrecognizable, altering its form but keeping its core identity intact.
88. Reflecting on the Past – Use archival materials (photos, recordings) to create a work that reflects your personal history in a conceptual way.
89. Art of Simplicity – Create an artwork so simple that the concept itself is what drives the meaning, not the materials used.
90. Faux History – Create a piece of “history” that never actually happened but feels authentic.
91. Virtual Space Art – Create an interactive, digital art piece that can only be viewed or experienced online.
92. The Art of Delay – Introduce an element of delay between the viewer’s action and the artwork’s response.
93. Objects with No Purpose – Create everyday objects that are designed with no functional use, purely for contemplation.
94. Playful Irony – Set up a situation where the art appears to defy expectations but with an underlying message that subverts traditional art norms.
95. Art from Fragments – Break an object into pieces, and then create something new and unexpected with the fragments.
96. Breaking Boundaries – Push the boundaries of art into non-traditional spaces (like outdoors, within everyday life).
97. Transformative Repetition – Perform the same action over and over again, changing only one detail each time to show how art evolves.
98. Suspended Reality – Create an installation that defies gravity, forcing people to question the physical world.
99. Environmental Art – Create art that interacts directly with the environment, like a forest where the trees themselves are a medium.
100. Imposing Presence – Create a piece that takes up an entire room, forcing the viewer to interact with the space itself.
101. Soundscapes of Everyday Life – Record ambient sounds from daily life (like a street corner, café, or bedroom) and present them as art pieces.
The Artist
Rob Pruitt was born in Washington D.C. in 1964 and studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. and Parsons School of Design in New York. He lives and works in New York.
Since the early 1990s, Rob Pruitt’s risk-taking investigations into American popular culture have taken many forms. From his notorious Cocaine Buffet (1998) and glitter portraits of Pandas or the significant Suicide Paintings series, Pruitt’s works are a surreal and extravagant interpretation of the pop world, a kaleidoscopic look towards mass culture by exploring the multiples aspects and the paradoxes of our present time.
Throughout his career, Rob Pruitt has fine-tuned his ability to express nuanced ideas about culture and society through the re-interpretation of common objects and materials, all filtered through a sense of humour and irony. With his Mask series, the artist continues his pursuit of depicting the complexities of personality and emotions. The facial gestures indeed are cut into the canvas with a razor - destructive and creative at the same time, these gestures are married to an accumulation of gradients, patterns, and prints to create a character