"Contemporary art is a farce"

El arte contemporáneo es una farsa

Me gustan las declaraciones sencillas y verídicas.
I like it when a statement is poignant and simple.


I guess finding familiarity in this article makes me some kind of art elitist, although I try my best to not judge and to vocalize it when I see a work of art that looks like bullshit to me. I hesitate long and hard, before going to an art exhibit, because I'm quite sure that I won't like what I see, I don't like most contemporary art. I don't GET performances and installations. My personal definition of "art" is in a way obsolete and old-fashioned, because I generally consider "art" something on a canvas, drawings, paintings, sculptures. And even then, a drawing, a painting or a sculpture, might just not feel like art to me, because it looks like absolutely no work was put into it, it looks arbitrary, something that was done to kill time.

HOWEVER, I also think that I don't really know what art is, I've been asked this question before. "Art" is a very wide and vague term, so wide and vague, that almost anything can be called "art". Does this put a damper on art? How can we put the canned shit of that Italian artist next to the David? Next to the Monalisa? Is that fair? Is canned shit really entitled to be called "art", just as much as a painting by Dalí? These cans of shit have been in Sotheby's and fucking museums, how dare you question their validity as art? Artist's shit in Wikipedia, so you know that I ain't blowing smoke up yo ass.

The article talks about ready mades, Marcel Duchamp's doing. I used to hate this guy, because he's the one that made ready mades happen, that's what started on art being what it is now, but I saw his work, his paintings and I liked them and I reconciled myself with him. He just happened to have something else in mind.

I will be the last one to say that something that somebody took the time to produce is bullshit, because I'm nobody to question wether it's genuine or not. I'm nobody to say, this is the work of some old, filthy fucking rich lady, that was bored, 'cuz her husband don't spend enough time with her and thought she's get dirty with some paint. This is the work of a spoiled fucking mamma's boy that can't decide what he is in life, so he is now an "artist", because we're all so fucking eccentric and directionless, drunks, drug using pieces of shit, you goddamn son of a bitch.
I don't know wether whoever found real solace and comfort in producing that which looks like nothing but an accidental spill of paint to me. I have no right.
I'm nobody to question it and there is also absolutely no way to know, wether it's genuine or not. Nobody can say they can.

On the other hand, I also think the ones that say they can tell, like the art critics are full of fucking shit the great majority of the time and it ties in with what I just wrote above. Art is a very personal, subjective and relative thing.
You not liking a piece of art, doesn't make it shit and it doesn't make it mean nothing, SOMEBODY loves that thing which you hate.
Moreover, basically because of what I was writing just now, an art critic has no way of knowing what a piece of art means or how it's going to impact society in the future or anything. An art critic can't say "add this, take this away and your work is going to be completely different". Art, I think, is also very instinctive and complex and sometimes it just doesn't have an explanation. And I love that the article validates that for me, too. I have no explanation for the pieces that I produce, very seldom I do, and I don't think them having an explanation is going to determine wether they're great or not. It's very common, when I read the pamphlets in an art exhibit, all of this SHIT, about society and how this piece of work criticizes society, because society is crap and everyone is full of shit and boring things that make me want to shoot myself.
If you really need to spew all of this to make your work mean something, there will be something off for me.

On the other other hand, I do think there is such a thing as going too far, I do think it's easy for performances and installations to be iffy and it's easy to go from I will change this lightbulb in my room to "oh, man, THE LIGHT, I painted my room with new light, all I had to do was change this lightbulb and my whole fucking world has changed, I will call this "the light of life", my new performance, I will charge people to come see me do this over and over again". "I am combing my hair, my hair comes out of my head, I have thoughts in my head, I am untangling the thoughts that come out of my head and they tangle themselves again, OH GOD MY SOUL, this is a performance right here". But performances and installations are also considerably new things, and they have to go through their own evolution and they have a right to exist.

I have attempted to take part in performances and installations, I've done a performance/installation, only that one, so far and I did enjoy it, doing it, I enjoyed myself, I like what resulted of it. It was titled "Drifter" and there was an explanation for it and everything, I don't feel like less of an artist for having done it and I don't regret it.

What does this article say about me? I've been referring to myself as a visual artist for several years now, do I feel exempt from what the article says? I've read the article twice, once yesterday, when it came to my attention and once today. Yesterday, I felt upset, because of what I was just now writing about art critics and art criticism; today I find some truth in it.
But, really, who says that what I do is good art or not? Me? Just because I spend hours drawing and painting, does that by default make my work good? Am I entitled to call myself an artist? I don't know, man.
I try to be faithful to myself and what I really want to do, I try my best so that when I'm done with a piece that I legitimately like it and I am sincerely happy with it. And that's about as much as I can do. That and generally keep my opinion to myself about the work of other people.
Or something like that.