seems that whenever i think that nothing done in the name of artistic self-expression could surprise me anymore, along comes something new.
i have hinted (ok, more than hinted) at my contempt for much of what has been pawned off as "art" over the past hundred or so years, as its most celebrated practitioners discarded the age-old tenets of beauty, virtuosity and elevation of humanity through their collective vision, and embraced something quite different.
all of a sudden, "good" art was no longer beautiful and able to stand on its innate merits--the new art was crude and ugly, and thus had to be explained in order to be understood. and anyone who saw through the scam promoted by these clever hucksters and their apologists, or merely didn't get the sales pitch--or, god forbid, said something as eminently sensible as "my two-year-old coulda done that"--was immediately dismissed and ridiculed by the intelligentsia as an unwashed philistine.
and thus the public were intimidated into buying the big lie--and, before they knew it, offering up their tax dollars to subsidize the artistic "creation" of such masterpieces as crucifixes in jars of urine.
corollary #1 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art: beauty is hard, but ugly is easy. so, ugly it is.
corollary #2 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art: if it has to be explained in order to be appreciated, it's probably crap.
all of which is merely a prelude to the subject of today's post--if you think i have strong feelings about such static creations as paintings, sculpture and photographs of sacred objects in jars of artistic piss, you don't even wanna get me started on the subject of that bastard love-child spawned by the modern art movement known as "performance" art.
seriously, what does it say about a civilization when some guy calling himself an artist can chop off his dick and balls, braise 'em up in a pan along with some mushrooms, and serve his creation garnished with a sprig of parsley to a group of art lovers who ponied up $250 a plate
god, i at least hope he was hung
in order to partake of his genius--oh, and have a waitlist of disappointed patrons lined up with checkbooks in hand on the off chance he can manage to grow, chop off and cook another set?
i guess the better question would be, why did this giant of the art world sell himself so short? because god knows the right gallery coulda gotten him so much more.
1 comment:
I read the article you linked to.
I stated that the artist considered himself asexual, was going to have his balls and penis removed and had people eat it to pay for the surgery and to raise awareness as to sexual minorities and asexual people.
That kinda makes sense to me. It is deeply disturbing, but it does so in a way that I can understand as having some semblance to what we call "art."
I think most modern art is not disturbing, but merely clever or contrived.
So while I share guttermorality's dumbfounded view of modern art generally, I do not necessarily agree with your view as to this specific example.
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