This isn’t about you; this is bigger than you.

Consider this a retraction of sorts. Let us return to the well-known, well-loved “art” argument. Many of you may remember that I was engaged in a long and bitter struggle with Ravi et al. The principal contention was whether or not someone could say definitively that something was or was not art. I claimed that, yes, while I myself could not satisfactorily define art, it remained possible. Ravi and Michael wanted the pineapple bong to be art. I would like to clarify once and for all that I never said functional objects could not also be art—a lot of ceramic pieces seemed to fit in this category—I simply said that the (sort-of) functional pineapple bong was not art. This is not like that whole chicken-and-egg thing; it’s more like that whole square-and-rectangle thing.* In my opinion (to be more Ukrainian, I should say “to my mind”), nothing precluded functional objects from -status- [this is supposed to be slashed] classification (a nod to Heidegger, Lacan, and Derrida) as “art.”

Further, it is my belief that David and Patrick both used this as a proxy war of sorts in order to test out their own theories while reveling in the anger and frustration we bred among ourselves. In brief, David mostly stayed out of the argument except to flip-flop occasionally. He usually held that whatever was considered “art” was simply a reflection of the caprices of the ruling class. Patrick reiterated the opinion of his ex-boss whose husband was an artist, saying that art can never be functional. I’m not sure if this put him on my side or Ravi’s. Actually, I think he just wanted to say something he could get Ravi and I to disagree on.

I have come to the (belated?) conclusion that saying something is “art” is pure bullshit. Is that a bit strong? “What,” you might be thinking, “finally enlightened me?” Well, I’ll tell you. A combination of Chomsky—he’s been leading me to a lot of things lately—and the November 2006 “Art” issue of W. Incidentally, if anyone wants a peak into the lives of the super, super rich who benefited from all of the other W’s tax-cuts and the rather sad lives of the people who care about and strive to match the banal social trivialities of the elite —that is, “old money” and the nuveau riche, or neo-cons and neo-liberals versus the bourgeoisie, or the upper crust and their “yes” men. It doesn’t really matter what I call them, I guess—she should take a look at this rag. These are the people who get off on sentences such as: “A society fixture in Hong Kong steps out on her own with a new handbag line” (132) and “TeNo [jewelry, watches, and accessories] metaphorically stands for emotional TechNology—and thus for the modern quite contradictory times we currently live in” (166).

So, the Chomsky has led me to realize how much influence the elite members of our society actually exert over our economy and foreign policy. I particularly like the way that he emphasizes there is no conspiracy to expose or undermine. Basically, he says, thinking about it that way is the wrong way of looking at the situation. There’s no conspiracy, per se, there are just conversations and shared cultural assumptions among the super rich (i.e. We should always and everywhere use the government to secure our positions of power and comfort in society at the expense of others.) None of this should be surprising or shocking.

In fact, the idea that conspiracies could possibly exist is distracting and makes people complacently accept the “normal” order of things as long as conspiracies aren’t being executed. That is, if we can get a bunch of people worked up about Kennedy’s assassination, they won’t bother us when we make the income tax a little more regressive and shift money from education to the defense budget so we can bomb poor people in other countries. What does this have to do with art? Well, it helped me realize that I was idealizing the art world, taking exception to what I saw to be unacceptable infractions, but overlooking the fact that those “exceptions” were indicative of a greater pattern and that actually the whole structure is problematic.

Whereas Chomsky gave me the framework, W filled in the details. The magazine is ripe for Ravi’s files. There are all these articles about making new stars. It is actually embarrassing that I didn’t realize sooner what a game this all is, because it is no secret. The WArtFlash straightforwardly explains, “Though great talent may be innate, parlaying that gift into fame and fortune requires some combination of hard work, good luck and the all-important approval of a powerful few” (192). It goes on to explain that fifty years ago there was one critic who basically decided who was going to make it and who wasn’t. Now that power is more “democratically” spread among about 50 gallerists and various dealers.

I must admit that I am disappointed, if only because the rug has been pulled out from under my idea of art. It used to seem like such a noble endeavor before, but now I rank the artists who charges tens, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars for their work with CEOs and advertisers. There is a game they must play. If they don’t charge enough, they devalue themselves. If they charge too much, collectors could easily get huffy about their egoism. You know, I think it is lamentable, because the majority of painters, sculptors, carvers, printers, what have you, will never be famous or even able to eek out a living on their creations. Those people are not playing the game. No, I don’t think I should blame it on the artists; they are plunged into the deplorable world of speculation and career-making and –breaking.

There are still so many questions to consider. Does the art world always absorb its own critique (á la One-Dimensional Man)? Hence, a smart-ass comes along and decides to make a bunch of “post-modern” art making fun of art. With any luck, that person’s bandwagon is jumped on and she is hailed as the next big thing. When she makes her pieces, she gives them up and is at others’ mercy to see what will become of them. I believe that there is still the question of creativity versus formulaity, and perhaps it is here that we will find out what makes some artistic works powerful and meaningful and what makes others garbage (pronounced “gar-bahj”). I think we also have to come back to accessibility/proliferation. How could it be that something meaningful and momentous can reach a large audience, not just a wealthy audience, without losing the thing that made it interesting in the first place? I realize that I am still positing some values without defending them: uniqueness, momentousness, significance, materialism, democracy. Why couldn’t a vacuous, mass-produced ode to robber-barons be art if it was so declared? Have I dug myself back in? No, I must forsake art.

*Squares are both squares and rectangles, but rectangles are not also squares. squares : rectangles :: ceramics : art, that is, necessity and contingency. But ceramic pieces will not necessarily be art. So, I guess they’re both contingent.