Walking through the mall today, feeling annoyed at the traffic, feeling annoyed at the crowds, feeling a little stuffed from lunch, I walked past a booth loaded with 2008 calendars. Calendars with beautiful women in them (with fake... probably everything), calendars with male models on the front (who probably starved and dehydrated themselves before the shoot to get the leanest look possible), and, of course, calendars with cats.
It got me thinking whether or not a calendar can be a work of art in and of itself, or whether a calendar can only contain art while the rest of it remains a utilitarian object. I suppose if every date inside a calendar was intentionally wrong, if non-existent holidays (Festivus!) and additional months were added to it, it could then pass as art, as all utility would have been stripped away from it and all you'd be left with is the creativity of its maker. You could of course argue then that it wouldn't be a calendar anymore, if the term itself inherently implies functionality.