The Screwing of the Artist, part 1

In fact, I almost don’t know where to begin: the way some sleazy literary agents nickel-and-dime their authors; the way publishing houses refuse to support mid-list authors with pr, placement, and distribution; the cultural mindset that artists should be poor; the way art galleries are, largely, owned and run by dishonest and disrespectful douchebags who take 50% and more from the artists’ sales and do nothing to deserve that except pay rent on a storefront; the way American education from K to 12 fails to educate either budding artists or the budding public in what good art is; or, and yes, I blame the artist too: the way so many artists refuse to grow up and take on adult fiscal responsibility and effect a change in the system. Note to Peter Pan painters and writers everywhere: if you bend over, you will take it up the butt.

The most recent way we’ve all been reamed, individually as artists and collectively as a public: the $25,000,000 sale of that piece of doo-doo Jeff Koons “Balloon Flower (Magenta).”

Note to everyone: Jeff Koons sucks as an artist, and “Balloon Flower (Magenta)” is bad art.

 

Actually, it’s atrocious art. It’s ugly. It’s meaningless. Worse, it’s just silly. When a piece like this sells for that kind of money, the only thing it serves is to make us a laughing-stock in history. In 100 years, art historians and critics will call this the Dark Ages of art, and we will all be cringing with humiliation in our graves.

And, naturally, Christie’s and Jeff Koons are laughing all the way to the bank at the idiocy of anyone who would buy such a piece of crap, and at the gullible media for freely promoting it, and at a public moronic enough to believe that a big number means important art. They’re washing off their fists after wriggling them in our bottoms–yes, NY Times, they’ve fisted you, too–and smirking at the hoax they’ve perpetrated on a stupid, indiscriminate public.

To the public: go to museums and read books and talk to working artists to find out what good art is. Watch Sister Wendy on dvd. Just don’t talk to art critics and art history professors, because, largely, their media are words, overly abstruse theories, and self-importance. The “Blah blah blah” about art doesn’t matter .0001 percent as much as the visceral impact of beauty on the soul. That occupies a space that is mostly inarticulate.

So when you see some silly objet of modern art and you say, “My kid could do better than this,” believe it: you’re right. The emperor has no clothes.