Michael said: > > > But as for its getting into the art history mainstream, > whose fault is > that? Art historians and knowledgeable writers in the art > press, via > the sales patter of gallery owners and other sales brokers, > I suppose. > But art historians and writers should know better, they > should be > alert to the fact that Hirst is hustling and not pursuing a > more valid > purpose, shouldn't they?
And I reply: Art historians are locked into the linear notion that art history progessses with one ism after another, each one partially emerging from the previous one or reacting against it. Their unquestioned assumption is that whatever falls within the artworld context is art. But that is assuredly not the case since nowadays anything at all can be placed into that context. Yet when the "anything" is big enough, expensive to make and expensive to buy, it's almost sure to have a well-lit spot in a major gallery, museum, and auction house. So it gets treated as the offspring of genuinely historical art. But there's no real linage. The real linage for that stuff is big-time military weaponry which exists for its psychological value, not really for its functional value (no sane government wants to actually use it). One of these days Gagosian will have the money to put a nuclear sub or ballistic missle on display as art. Only then will Hirst and Koons be one-upped. And that will signal the end of their game. The best art is being done at the margins, by the new asetics. They are almost monastic, habituated to solitude and the process and habits of the studio. They are maginalized and obscure. They keep civilization, at least the part that we value, alive. Michael said: > It seems to me that you object to the range and degree of > *post-WWII* > consumer-culture mercantilism and marketing. This is just > the latest > manifestation of that phenomenon. I reply: Yes, I object. I am a child of the war-II era, when few consumer goods were available, or needed. Well into my 20s and even 30s there were few credit cards, and those that existed were the sort you paid monthly, without interest charges. One paid cash or went without. Into the 70s Buying a house required 20% down. Auto loans were 36mo. max. In other words, personal debt was avoided or kept to a manageable level. Now huge personal debt is the norm with the average family carrying 5 figure credit card debt and paying the minumum. Our economy is wrecked by the greed of usurious double digit interest charges on that debt that forces people to seek the bad equity loans, etc. Greed and decades of telling folks that can have the "dream" now (mostly pointless gadgets) has brought us to our knees. The manufactured art being pitched for millions is just a reflection of that hideous immoral sickness. Art should heal the spirit not kill it. I also object to most popular culture and nearly everything on TV or in the Hollywood movies and all the rest of low culture is boring as well. I'm an aged relic from a more enlightened past. But I love getting up every day and going to my quiet studio where brushes, paints, and the ghosts of my favorite artists await, eager for my arrival. WC
