Modern art is hilarious and insists it’s deadly serious, financially overflowing and yet a cardboard sham, but the whole mess teeters on shaky ground. From way back some original fuzzy thinking has finally come down to this, a perishable piece of fruit attached to the wall in the most plebeian way possible, with duct tape. Is it so different, really, from a porcelain urinal entered in an art competition under a fictitious name long ago, on its way to becoming the most notorious single icon of modern art? Seen from the outside that episode seems nothing more than an adolescent prank by a second rate and derivative painter, the petty revenge of the rejected. Originally intended as a turd in the punch bowl, Duchamp was no doubt stunned and amazed to be declared a genius because of it. It was this peculiar inversion of parody and the real that ‘liberated’ art from a slavish reference to things seen, and converted the very notion of art into a puzzle to be thought about, written about, and talked about endlessly.
It’s little wonder an american culture distracted by a constant stream of advertising images, all with captions and voice-overs to explain what’s being seen, might miss the market-dictated descent of art into toxic self-effacement, and then one day the banana. So who steps forward from this vast assemblage of every possible definition of art to say ‘enough, too far, too dumb, and way too expensive?’ No one on the inside gets to make that claim, and that’s about everybody who shares the creed of modern art. If you bought the urinal in art school, well here’s a banana. Thanks for the money and the trivialization of art in the eyes of the public, it’s been a steal and surely robs the future.
Modern art isn’t superior to all the art there ever was, and in the end will only be an aberrant chapter in a long history of human expression first found in caves from way before the time of towns, before fame, and before money. The real obscenity here is not the banana for a hundred and twenty thousand in an edition of three, two sold at the fair and a third held for one hundred and fifty thousand to be sold to a museum -- it’s the whole enterprise, the publicity-seeking money-laundering charade of pissing away buckets of money because there simply isn’t anything else to do with it, it just keeps coming out of our sleeves. This won’t be cool much longer.
Art accurately reports and reflects the times, and spreads the message of an evolving consciousness the forces of control would always like to suppress and try to dilute with their state sponsored anti-art. Above and beyond, a vast network of charitable foundations and complicit museums traffic in the vastly inflated tokens of ponzi scheme art, all of it only a break-ranks run on the market away from total collapse. Time to flush the whole business and just look at art, it’s everywhere. Any open exhibit of a hundred pieces in your hometown will have one or two you’d like, maybe enough to own, and if the price turns out to be uncomfortable perhaps you should give up something else. Trust yourself.
It’s little wonder an american culture distracted by a constant stream of advertising images, all with captions and voice-overs to explain what’s being seen, might miss the market-dictated descent of art into toxic self-effacement, and then one day the banana. So who steps forward from this vast assemblage of every possible definition of art to say ‘enough, too far, too dumb, and way too expensive?’ No one on the inside gets to make that claim, and that’s about everybody who shares the creed of modern art. If you bought the urinal in art school, well here’s a banana. Thanks for the money and the trivialization of art in the eyes of the public, it’s been a steal and surely robs the future.
Modern art isn’t superior to all the art there ever was, and in the end will only be an aberrant chapter in a long history of human expression first found in caves from way before the time of towns, before fame, and before money. The real obscenity here is not the banana for a hundred and twenty thousand in an edition of three, two sold at the fair and a third held for one hundred and fifty thousand to be sold to a museum -- it’s the whole enterprise, the publicity-seeking money-laundering charade of pissing away buckets of money because there simply isn’t anything else to do with it, it just keeps coming out of our sleeves. This won’t be cool much longer.
Art accurately reports and reflects the times, and spreads the message of an evolving consciousness the forces of control would always like to suppress and try to dilute with their state sponsored anti-art. Above and beyond, a vast network of charitable foundations and complicit museums traffic in the vastly inflated tokens of ponzi scheme art, all of it only a break-ranks run on the market away from total collapse. Time to flush the whole business and just look at art, it’s everywhere. Any open exhibit of a hundred pieces in your hometown will have one or two you’d like, maybe enough to own, and if the price turns out to be uncomfortable perhaps you should give up something else. Trust yourself.
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