Annals of the art world, division of academic foolishness
Years ago I read an amusing piece in the London Telegraph about an exhibition of Damien Hirst’s, er, art work at some glitzy Cork Street gallery. The man with the formaldehyde sharks had lots of exciting new bijoux to offer his public. One immortal opus consisted of a tray full of dirty coffee cups, overflowing ash trays, and the like. After the opening party, a diligent janitor, who I hope has gone on to a post as an art critic, tidied up the tray.
Yep, out went the master’s work, all those carefully arranged cigarette butts and lipstick-smeared napkins, valued, reported a melancholy gallery director, at more than £100,000.
He cheered up, however, when informed that the wok could be “recreated.” What a boon for posterity.
£100,000 for Damien Hirst’s detritus. It’s not quite as risible, perhaps, as “Artist’s Shit,” the 90 tin cans of human excrement that Piero Manzoni produced (though not, I think, in a single sitting) in 1961. As I recall, the Tate Gallery paid £65,000 for a can or two, though it’s not clear that they are still part of the collection since they had an unpleasant tendency to burst.
I thought of these and similar episodes when my friend Michael Lewis, a professor of art history at Williams College, sent me the following memo which had been circulated by a diligent colleague:
Dear Studio Faculty,
Security came to my office this morning and said that they found a bucket with what appears to be medical waste in it in Driscoll Dining Hall. They thought it might an art project. It has been turned over to Health Services for testing to see if it’s real.
Does anyone know of any such art project?
When you stop chuckling, think about this: Michael’s colleague was being perfectly rational in sending around that memo. In the age of charlatans like Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, the Chapman Brothers, and, oh many more practitioners of mind-numbing psycho-pathology, who can say whether a bucket of medical waste is or is not an art project? If Tracey Emin can win the Turner Prize for “My Bed”— “her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown”—why could a bucket of medical waste not be an art project at the “art” department of an over-priced private college in Massachusetts? (Tuition, room & board at Williams this year $56,770: what a steal!)
No, the art world, like so much of academia, is beyond satire, though not, I think, beyond ridicule. They’re both gaseous, over-inflated bubbles, straining, straining, and just about to burst. Laugh now while you still can.
It all brings fond memories of the canned poop show at the Tate!
A glimpse inside the artist’s mind, I take it…
All this poop talk harkens back to Alfred Jarry (Ubu Roi). No surprise that we are in an advanced state of culture regression, egged on by postmodern chic, that promotes anti-bourgeois “transgressiveness” as highest value. See http://clarespark.com/2012/07/29/girls-or-the-new-lost-generation/. That it is a childish form of romantic rebellion, no one would deny. But many conservatives are just as anti-bourgeois, see the culture wars for evidence.
Roger, that was awful.
(Is it possible to boo and applaud simultaneously? It seems appropriate for a pun such as that.)
The Left have certainly developed a lucrative strategy. The more they debase the fine arts in the service of those most noble of ideals, egalitarianism, fairness and diversity, the wealthier everyone becomes. As noted, anyone can create excrement while only a few are capable of making art of beauty and meaning. Who needs the real thing when so many are willing to pay so much for excrement? Besides, the real thing only makes the excrement look bad . . .
Roger, you never want to visit a university Art Department. It’s perhaps more dismaying than poop in a can.
Well, but pity the poor artist, it’s all been *done*, we already have pictures of horses, and soup cans, and boys in blue, and melted clocks, and puppies with big eyes, we have guys selling their dropcloths mounted on frames, so how can you even dare to paint anything at all, any aspiring artist with any sense will despair immediately and apply for a civil service job, or welfare.
All great artists throughout history truly believed in what they did. They “knew” they were correct in their interpretations of reality. Belief (for the time being) appears to be dead among self-appointed creative types. Crap is produced.
“They’re both gaseous, over-inflated bubbles, straining, straining, and just about to burst.” – Just make sure that when it bursts you are nowhere near a Damien Hirst piece!
I have a university art degree and I must concur with Ajax (You’re not falling on a sword, are you?). If it isn’t about decay, destruction, or desolation, they simply aren’t interested.
Do away with the 1% for art in publicly funded projects (some states have their own similar program) and most so-called artists would go on welfare or learn to run a cash register.
I’ve got a batch in the fine arts and I don’t really have a problem with all the goofiness. The main problem is that these people aren’t funny or clever or good satirists.
Vulgarity can be forgiven if it’s good. Look at R. Crumb. None of these people have ever risen to that level. That in itself is vulgar.
a canner, exceedingly canny,
one morning remarked to his granny,
“a canner can can
anything that he can,
but a canner can’t shit in a can, can he?”
DADA, more and more. Plus, The Emperor’s New Clothes. More people need to say what it really is!
I would laugh harder at the pretensions (and talentlessness) of “high art” if the so-called artists weren’t sucking up my tax dollars.
You might find it heartening to know that real art is alive and well, and that a variety of traditional kinds of painting are even gaining prominence as internet platforms subplant magazines and newspapers as preferred ways of disseminating information. Real artists have continuously followed the path of making real art, though they have done so — sometimes — against the odds. I could direct you to so many really wonderful and astonishing artists living today. These fads of big money charlatans play more of an economic than a cultural role in providing devices for people with lots of cash to move it around in largely unregulated ways and to get big tax advantages at the end of the game. In contrast real art speaks to the human spirit and it will always attract the allegiance of those who long to experience and perhaps to understand beauty.
Thanks for pointing that out. It’s been my hope that eventually the big galleries will start carrying real art again, and museums will stop wasting their funding on literal crap. The internet has become the museum of our age.
Josh @5,
“Well, but pity the poor artist, it’s all been *done*[...].”
Landscapes, Josh. Landscapes. After the modern “art” period fizzles, they’ll be all we’ve got left.
Van Gogh was not crazy, just clumsy with a knife.