Friday, April 25, 2008

The Art World

My rough thoughts on the art world as seen in New York, New York featuring Brooklyn and Chelsea galleries and The MOMA and Whitney Museums.

Installation Idea: Me belching in The Whitney Museum after eating a hotdog and ginger ale from the cart outside. Work in collaboration with man who enters sound installations and sneezes loudly. Status: ACCOMPLISHED!

Minimalist Scupture: Gag.

Video art: Woman wearing viking helmet and blonde braids with unexplained bloody nose wandering L.A. with camera person.

Spike Lee Hurricane Katrina documentary: moved me to the point of dropping my threshold for contemporary art to absolute zero.

...ability of abstract art to almost turn into something. Forms appear and recede coalesce into sense then break apart.

"Anarchist Collective" intervention in Chelsea Gallery looks strikingly similar to a gallery show. Anarchist artists all graduated from Harvard and now create art under the single name of an imaginary middle-aged Euro-American man. All pieces seem to be tuned to the pitch of "Kill your TV", says Maxwell Heller. I agree. Taking an antagonistic stance towards the perceived status-quo does not necessarily make your work interesting or edgy and yet the gallery was packed and overflowing. I have never seen so many attractive and artfully dressed people in one place in my life and wanted nothing to do with them as in, "I want to jump your bones so long as you don't talk."

Featuring:
Twenty-somethings dressed down to impress
Dripping hipness
Ironic asian bowl cut

I don't trust you (and your $$$)
Mutual judgement exchange
[these are real people, you realize that right Lindsey?]

Outsider art is where it's at. I have much to say on this topic. Can you imagine an artist, poet, musician who doesn't need you? Who's going to make what they make pretty much no matter what. Sure, there are problems here too but let's keep this in mind and discuss.

2 comments:

1 said...

I just had a long conversation with a friend about this. She's an insanely accomplished artist, i.e many awards/scholarships, worrying about gallery shows, etc. Her husband makes a living as a painter in Holland. Occupation: artist. And they are both miserable creatively.
She kept asking why I hadn't ever shown my work, why I don't try, and why I am so content not to.

Here's a concept: art as a hobby. That doesn't mean to make it insignificant. What is the definition of the word hobby?
"An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure."

Maybe it is getting old, but I have finally gotten to the point where I don't care what anyone thinks about what I write or paint or draw or glue together, because it's not FOR anyone else. When art starts becoming solely about your peers, when art is created self consciously and by hands guided primarily by the critical eyes of others, it becomes a product.

Call it outsider art or whatever you want. But you're right.

Miss you L.

manjula martin said...

yes. just: yes.