Sunday, July 15, 2007

When Anything is Art

Roger Kimball on the state of the art world. An excerpt:

Why is the art world a disaster? The prevalence of exhibitions like “Wrestle,” of collectors like Marieluise Hessel, of institutions like the Hessel Museum and Bard College help us begin to answer that question. Their very ordinariness enhances their value as symptoms. In part, the art world is a disaster because of that ordinariness: because of the popularization and institutionalization of the antics and attitudes of Dada. As W. S. Gilbert knew, when everybody’s somebody, nobody’s anybody. When the outrĂ© attitudes of a tiny elite go mainstream, only the rhetoric, not the substance, of the drama survives.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very interesting article. The art music world was been struggling in a similar fashion since the early 1900s. Once all the barriers are broken down, where do we go next? I hope compelling content will still rise to the top.

Michael Wade said...

Brian,

The reluctance to draw boundaries subverts standards and, I believe, harms the entire field.