The resident art critic for New Yorker Magazine was just reciting dogma when asserting that mid-century abstract expressionists “realized the shortest route to meaning and significance was through abstraction”, and pretty much all of art ever since has been constructed on top of their breakthrough revelation. It’s pronounced as though it was a self-evident fundamental principal, but I’m pretty sure it’s just dumb. Farm animals and four year olds can do it, and being blind drunk was never a distraction. Maybe what he meant to say was that the early abstractionists “realized the easiest route to fame and fortune was through repetition”, a technique ruthlessly employed by each new wave of art’s pop stars ever since.
As merchandizing it’s brilliant, but as art it’s so astoundingly boring that the big guys just contract it out -- repetition gets to be like work. Consider the famous British painter who only painted stripes or the American who never used anything but white. They had robust careers and commanded lovely prices, but even they wouldn’t want to be alone with their own artwork very long. The new guy with spot paintings he doesn’t do himself says, as though serious, that no two are absolutely alike. This is art for morons. I don’t care how many millions it claims to move at auction, what morbidly compromised institutions are hip deep in it, or how many push magazines it publishes that pretend to be journalism, the art establishment is a high-milage professional trying to hock costume jewelry, for way too much money.
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