DrBenway
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2007
- Posts
- 2,122
- Likes
- 15
The NYT reports that Damien Hirst's two-day sale at Sotheby's has set, by a wide margin, a new record for an auction of the works of a single artist. The total for the auction was just over $200 million.
I cannot believe that there are that many rich, stupid, tasteless people walking around on this planet. His work is wafer thin conceptually, and his "technique," mostly contributed by his army of "assistants," has nothing to do with art.
We have reached a point where buyers enthusiastically line up to buy whatever the insiders who control the art world tell them to buy. Once an "artist" has been so annointed, literally anything that he does is immediately pronounced a masterpiece.
About a year ago, I went to an elaborately-staged exhibition at MOMA, built around the theme of perceptions of time. At this ridiculous excuse for a show, I saw, up close and personal, Jeff Koons's "sculpture" that consists of three basketballs floating in a fish tank of the sort that you can buy at any pet shop. Also on offer was Martin Creed's insultingly dumb "Lights Going On And Off." Yep, a bare gallery, with the cieling light fixture on a timer so that it switched on and off every few seconds (Get it? On? Then off? Get it?) This work of pure genius won the prestigious Turner prize in England a few years ago, so it must be brilliant, right?
Hirst trades in the same sort of swill: a dead fish floating in a tank of formaldehyde, a preserved calf in a vitrine, a platinum casting of a human skull encrusted with a couple of thousand diamonds. Well, O.K., that last one might be worth something if you melted it down, sold the platinum for scrap, and made jewelry out of the rocks.
Before the art police haul me away, let me point out that I like all sorts of challenging work, in art, music and literature. I will go to the mat to defend Jasper Johns, John Cage, Jackson Pollack, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, etc., etc.
The problem is, art is no longer something that has any inherent aesthetic value; it's value is conferred on it by the gatekeeper critics, curators and collectors who play this foul game. And if you DARE to suggest that an annointed artist is a charlatan, well...you obviously are a philistine with no taste. No attempt is made to justify or explain why a floating dead fish is a work of art. It's art because those in the know say so. Now shut up and sign the check.
It should be manifestly obvious that if everything is art, then nothing is art.
I cannot believe that there are that many rich, stupid, tasteless people walking around on this planet. His work is wafer thin conceptually, and his "technique," mostly contributed by his army of "assistants," has nothing to do with art.
We have reached a point where buyers enthusiastically line up to buy whatever the insiders who control the art world tell them to buy. Once an "artist" has been so annointed, literally anything that he does is immediately pronounced a masterpiece.
About a year ago, I went to an elaborately-staged exhibition at MOMA, built around the theme of perceptions of time. At this ridiculous excuse for a show, I saw, up close and personal, Jeff Koons's "sculpture" that consists of three basketballs floating in a fish tank of the sort that you can buy at any pet shop. Also on offer was Martin Creed's insultingly dumb "Lights Going On And Off." Yep, a bare gallery, with the cieling light fixture on a timer so that it switched on and off every few seconds (Get it? On? Then off? Get it?) This work of pure genius won the prestigious Turner prize in England a few years ago, so it must be brilliant, right?
Hirst trades in the same sort of swill: a dead fish floating in a tank of formaldehyde, a preserved calf in a vitrine, a platinum casting of a human skull encrusted with a couple of thousand diamonds. Well, O.K., that last one might be worth something if you melted it down, sold the platinum for scrap, and made jewelry out of the rocks.
Before the art police haul me away, let me point out that I like all sorts of challenging work, in art, music and literature. I will go to the mat to defend Jasper Johns, John Cage, Jackson Pollack, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, etc., etc.
The problem is, art is no longer something that has any inherent aesthetic value; it's value is conferred on it by the gatekeeper critics, curators and collectors who play this foul game. And if you DARE to suggest that an annointed artist is a charlatan, well...you obviously are a philistine with no taste. No attempt is made to justify or explain why a floating dead fish is a work of art. It's art because those in the know say so. Now shut up and sign the check.
It should be manifestly obvious that if everything is art, then nothing is art.