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{contemporary art} frederick pollack I was complaining to Jim, my artist friend, about contemporary art. Crude cartoons of Robin sucking off Batman, etc.; one sold for twenty grand. Photographs of photographs. Second-wave neo-expressionists expressing nothing. “You don’t understand,” said Jim. “The viewer comes to each of these with an illusion. An illusory expectation. Of composition, say, or subtlety, a point or subtext; even a new shock. And in each case the expectation is frustrated. Something is lacking that never was before. And so the viewer, however hard he thinks he is, finds he still had an illusion, and congratulates himself for having had it as he is saying goodbye. Think of the energy paradoxically released from black holes. It’s still art, you see; it fucks you the way the Market does, only faster and deeper.” |
