I have a personal aversion to sensationalism and celebrity culture, and never warmed to Warhol, but I’m not in charge. I don’t pick and choose except for my own wall, but see larger movements turning, and see art as both expression and a means of cultural transition. Oh, I’d like to nudge along what will happen anyway, but resigned to just yelling from the bleachers.
The trophies of wealth continue dominate florid art commentaries, glam parties, decadence, prices up and up, fabulous, and an entrenched high court of academic clerics distributes state largesse to true believers, the way it’s always been. They’re the ones who have limited art, who put up fences, who domesticate the herd and fatten for market, and it’s me wants to open it up to a new constituency, to redefine the product, to put a little free-range back in the mix, and to respect a larger audience capable of discernment and receptive to an art they find palatable.
Changes are at hand, and when the government reconstitutes itself after it’s weird melt-down/molt, in progress, art might find itself on ‘stand-by’ -- more pressing needs cry out, roads and bridges, on and on. Decadence as well could be going out of favor, as a working class starts waking up, developing self awareness, and serious art around the house could help with that. Human culture doesn’t mutate until the stress becomes unbearable history shows, and it’s been getting a little tight around here recently. Visual art offers a common connection unsullied by the corruption of language, and to an individual can become a life-line of duration and substance in an increasingly slippery digital universe. Once they start buying art, the people who budget, those first few drops of rain will make the desert bloom. That was my bet long time ago, an alternative audience for a more open inclusive notion of art, and while still not certain, the odds keep going down.
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