I don't think I'm an artist never have.
Even though like you, and everybody else I've been doing one kind or other of creative mayhem all my life. Still I don't fit any description of them guys,...not one.
It could be that the only descriptions I've ever run into are about semi-existent mostly guys doing weird shit then getting insanely rich, and or dying broke. Anyone can die in the gutter, but it takes creds to do it as an artist.
It could be that the only descriptions I've ever run into are about semi-existent mostly guys doing weird shit then getting insanely rich, and or dying broke. Anyone can die in the gutter, but it takes creds to do it as an artist.
The artist caste is as insular as any other.
However unlike any other everybody more or less is one kind or sort of artist. So a few guys figured out the only way to make the racket a going business would be to limit membership.
Which they did with amazing completeness.
Art creds are hard to come by. Well okay sometimes they get a bit guilty about it, and clear a few square inches for "Outsider Art" or Comix book folks, but that's about all.
Meanwhile Seven Billion folks are out there creating stuff all the time all over the place.
All unrecognized. Maybe our crap to "official" artists is unrecognizable as "art". Like so much of their crap is to us.
Meanwhile Seven Billion folks are out there creating stuff all the time all over the place.
All unrecognized. Maybe our crap to "official" artists is unrecognizable as "art". Like so much of their crap is to us.
The business of being a "Genius" has a similar limiting culture.
Clearly you can only be one if you invent some weird shit that kills people or can be sold for zillions. I mean just look at who we call geniuses.
Okay maybe a few nice folks, but still...look at 'em.
Btw there are Seven Billion of them unofficial geniuses too. Using their creativity to develop all manner of swell jazz. You don't know about them because none of it makes money or at least no one yet knows how to apply it to make money. You know the deal.
'Course there are Seven Billion jerks fanatics assholes morons, and complete idiots too. Our last election, and world political mass delusions religions wars, and regressive cruel customs show that seriously well.
So to conclude we're a world of brilliant creative artistic geniuses with a strong habit of grand delusions vicious stupidity, and extreme violence.
Yep made in the image of da Gawds alright.
The art establishment is a racket and the "art" that it manufactures and glorifies is a joke. This industry is of a piece with the crookedness of the the education racket, the medical racket, the housing racket, the insurance racket, big pharma and the military security complex. Since they have no intrinsic aesthetic value, the productions of big-name hucksters like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst always require lots of explanation by important-sounding critics and curators with PhDs; and this is because in reality there is nothing to understand about such works except that with each and every one of them a fraud is being perpetrated. It's a confidence game of which the active principle is Gresham's law, by which the bad drives out the good. This shakedown is destroying the western tradition of art, deliberately and systematically, for profit.
ReplyDeleteWhen we call someone a genius, we're abusing that word. To the Romans, from whom it comes, a genius was a spirit with whom some person favored by the gods was regularly in contact and which inspired them, like a Muse. Perhaps the best model for a highly creative culture that I've heard of is that of Bali, where a significant proportion of the population are artisans or artists. Though I wouldn't want to fixate too much on one example, it seems like a good one.
For those who can read or understand Spanish, it's worth looking up the videos of Avelina Lesper, a Mexican art critic and author of "El Fraude del Arte Contemporaneo" (The Fraud of Contemporary Art). She takes no prisoners.
Pollack is attributed to having said, "...most modern art is an inside joke."
ReplyDeleteIf he didn't say it he should have.
That sums it all up.
Official art official faith official governance official fucking.
The price of joining the club is being the right gender race faith, and class. Talent would be okay, but not strictly speaking necessary.