Cy Twombly is dead. I couldn’t tell his work from that of the more seriously challenged clients of an adult daycare facility, and neither could any art expert on the planet. Drawings in caves rival the very best graphic people we’ve got – Picasso would have to stretch. So what’s going on here? Is contemporary art a hoax, a quasi-religious cult of personalities, a mass delusion, a conspiracy of thieves? Any or all, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t art. I think Andy Warhol and the mortgage swindle are different faces of one identity – art, not reflective of life, but a direct expression.
These processes work both ways, and messing with either the chicken or the egg affects the omelet. It’s a good time to look at art differently since no one we know is going to change banking. Art doesn’t function here, in central KY, as an expression of the community. Since I’m one of them, the common folk, I share their assessment of Cy Twombly and every museum director, uptown gallery owner, and millionaire art collector can look at his stuff all day – I wish it on them. Visual art doesn’t care what language you speak, and cares even less about academic awards, financial ranking, or the condition or style of what you have on. Pictures bypass the censorship of verbal thought, with its locks and gates of cultural conditioning and official sanction. Pictures can say anything, but not all pictures do.
