Who could understand ‘art’ without insider access, extensive post-grad conferencing, the trained eye of an expert? It isn’t me. I’ve never gotten past ‘what’s it a picture of, and how good is it,’ just a simple country yokel. That’s why I don’t try to stay current on latest developments, and default on my dues. I stand way back, about a hundred and fifty years, and taken as a chunk modernity poses some interesting questions.
Shortly after the turn of the twentieth, art began to court the wealthy and connected, and to hide from common folk. This radical unhitching of art from direct experience is all documented, by the way, in every museum in the land. It started with a urinal entered in an art show, an adolescent prank, really, but it was so fundamentally offensive, so insolent, so single-frequency moronic, that it was taken as a work of genius instead. It became the porcelain pivot point for the movement known as ‘modern art.’ By using money, the wealthy have been able to coax art into their private pen where they torture and distort it, keeping it dependent and totally unpalatable to the larger society, a wretched servant forced to carry their money bags past the IRS, and to provide identifiable trophies for the well-appointed semi-royal residence. Theon Greyjoy in real life.
This loathsome scheme was challenged from the south, by the mexicans. Diego Rivera made big paintings with millionaires in silk hats standing next to aztec warriors, next to conquistadors, next to farmers, all together, in a voice of common humanity, and he went to war with the Rockefellers, using their money. A big mistake. He made eight large paintings for them on commission, and then with the studio still rented produced eight more they wouldn’t like. Remember one in which rich people in furs and tuxes checked safety deposit boxes in a vault, while just above them there were long rows of bunks showing how the indigent were housed out on long island, such as that.
They set a trap, not just for Diego Rivera, but for the way humanity views itself, nothing less. They said to him put up a fresco, you can paint anything you want in our new steel building, should last a thousand years, and we’ll send you back to mexico rich. He fell for it. It took him an arduous six months on scaffolding, working uncounted hours every week. They wouldn’t allow photographs at any point, and when he was finished they jackhammered it down immediately. What was on it you may ask, and it can be seen, re-created in mexico with the funds left over, but it was a great defeat for us all. With Rockefeller sponsorship, a new wave called ‘abstract expressionism’ flooded the museums across the land, big, spontaneous, and mute. The common folk lost interest, and wasn’t that part of the plan?
So, lets scroll down to the end, catch up with the present day, and examine prime evidence, it isn’t hidden. Recently a billionaire from the fashion trade purchased the most prized painting on the planet for a record hundred and ten million dollars, and maybe we could take just a moment and look at it, consider what it has to say, about life, about art, about us. It defines ugly. It’s repulsive, a billboard for death by overdose, nihilistic, bored yet surly, all the while remarkably, transcendently unskilled and hard to look at -- but let’s try. Basquiat’s painting is repulsive for a reason. You’re not supposed to like it. You’ll see it, but won’t even try to process it’s incoherent scrawl. It does it’s job. It’s a bar across the door, a stink-bomb in the hallway, and exclusion zone to your mind. It makes art look not just unattainable but easily lived without, the message loud and clear -- ‘go root for your favorite team you six-pack swilling cretin, we’ll manage the art.’
It won’t work forever.
Shortly after the turn of the twentieth, art began to court the wealthy and connected, and to hide from common folk. This radical unhitching of art from direct experience is all documented, by the way, in every museum in the land. It started with a urinal entered in an art show, an adolescent prank, really, but it was so fundamentally offensive, so insolent, so single-frequency moronic, that it was taken as a work of genius instead. It became the porcelain pivot point for the movement known as ‘modern art.’ By using money, the wealthy have been able to coax art into their private pen where they torture and distort it, keeping it dependent and totally unpalatable to the larger society, a wretched servant forced to carry their money bags past the IRS, and to provide identifiable trophies for the well-appointed semi-royal residence. Theon Greyjoy in real life.
This loathsome scheme was challenged from the south, by the mexicans. Diego Rivera made big paintings with millionaires in silk hats standing next to aztec warriors, next to conquistadors, next to farmers, all together, in a voice of common humanity, and he went to war with the Rockefellers, using their money. A big mistake. He made eight large paintings for them on commission, and then with the studio still rented produced eight more they wouldn’t like. Remember one in which rich people in furs and tuxes checked safety deposit boxes in a vault, while just above them there were long rows of bunks showing how the indigent were housed out on long island, such as that.
They set a trap, not just for Diego Rivera, but for the way humanity views itself, nothing less. They said to him put up a fresco, you can paint anything you want in our new steel building, should last a thousand years, and we’ll send you back to mexico rich. He fell for it. It took him an arduous six months on scaffolding, working uncounted hours every week. They wouldn’t allow photographs at any point, and when he was finished they jackhammered it down immediately. What was on it you may ask, and it can be seen, re-created in mexico with the funds left over, but it was a great defeat for us all. With Rockefeller sponsorship, a new wave called ‘abstract expressionism’ flooded the museums across the land, big, spontaneous, and mute. The common folk lost interest, and wasn’t that part of the plan?
So, lets scroll down to the end, catch up with the present day, and examine prime evidence, it isn’t hidden. Recently a billionaire from the fashion trade purchased the most prized painting on the planet for a record hundred and ten million dollars, and maybe we could take just a moment and look at it, consider what it has to say, about life, about art, about us. It defines ugly. It’s repulsive, a billboard for death by overdose, nihilistic, bored yet surly, all the while remarkably, transcendently unskilled and hard to look at -- but let’s try. Basquiat’s painting is repulsive for a reason. You’re not supposed to like it. You’ll see it, but won’t even try to process it’s incoherent scrawl. It does it’s job. It’s a bar across the door, a stink-bomb in the hallway, and exclusion zone to your mind. It makes art look not just unattainable but easily lived without, the message loud and clear -- ‘go root for your favorite team you six-pack swilling cretin, we’ll manage the art.’
It won’t work forever.
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