I get it. It’s concept art and I get it . Long live Duchamp. How many more decades do we have to attack the whole notion of art. Will anyone ever have an aesthetic experience from seeing a banana duck-taped to a wall? I think not. Comedian is the title of the piece. The joke is on who ever paid one hundred and twenty thousand for it. That’s where the big money is, lets all have a great laugh and applaud the cleverness.
I had my first aesthetic experience at the 1964 Worlds Fair, where, for about a minute and a half I got to see Michelangelo’s Pieta. It changed the way I saw the world. About two years later I decided I wanted to be an artist. A banana taped to the wall would not have had the same effect on my life.
What Duchamp has brought about with his “Fountain” is the question, “What makes one object art and another just a thing.” And with that one question opened the door to all sorts of “art”.
Andy Warhol took it a step further with his remaking of the ready made commercial Brillo Box constructed with plywood and painted to look like the actual cardboard boxes. While I agree that anything can be art, much of what is called art is not in my estimation.. Saying so does not make it so. It seems to me that standards of art have gone out the window.
I think I have a pretty good grasp of culture and the changes in my lifetime. Having witnessed segregation in our northern cities. The successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s, desegregation of public schools, the reawakening of the Women’s movement in the 70’s and the continuing battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. More recently the LGBQ -Trans movement which has made much progress in this new century. Though there is along way to go, progress has been made.
Democratized mass culture has brought about the fading importance of fine art. Brand is more important then content.
““Painting isn’t dead except as a major art. From now on it will be a discourse of adepts, like jazz.”” Dave Hickey.