Viva!

Last week I attended a panel discussion at MIT. It involved 3 artists discussing their work as it pertains to "Parody, Politics and Perfomativity", which, coincidentally was the name of the panel! For the most part the panel involved the artists perseverating about their work and how it does or does not fit into the artistic community. I was really put off by several of them, namely Tino Seghal. He made some shitty comment about how Boston was the kind of place that everyone was trying to get away from and I kind of wanted to punt his face. Also he did that shitty thing where he refused to answer questions by throwing the same question out to someone else. Or he'd make a joke, which were never that funny. But in reality I think I'm just stung about the snarky Boston comment so he could have cured world hunger up there and I would have pouted and stuck my bottom lip out. Aside from the inflated artist egoes there were two major themes that struck me as important. I'm going to discuss the first one right now and the second on in a later post. It's kind of late and I get sleepy...

One of the panelists was Cuban performance and interdisciplinary artist Tania Bruguera. Her work is mostly public and throws into question the viewer's role in the artistic process. She said that she wants to stop thinking about the art viewer as an "audience" but rather as a "citizen". She seemed pretty defensive on this point which generally causes me to lose interest. If your points can't stand up to argument then you don't believe in them then nor do I. One thing she said did say struck me though, and I thought about it long after I walked out of the building. Having been raised in Cuba she grew up understanding art differently that our Capitalist economy does. She said that the Socialist model of the art market sees art as objects of "desire and antiquity" rather than "something to be acquired". Her work isn't something that can be bought. She can't ever make any money from the performances and situations she stages, so to her our frenzy over selling and acquiring art doesn't apply. In Cuba everything was state-sponsored so there was never the frenzy to sell art like there is in the states. The American art market has kind of gone bat shit. Maybe it always has been, but throw in an economic collapse for good measure and things are not pretty. Art has become all about making money and it's causing galleries and artists to compromise themselves in order to stay competitive. Instead of seeking out and displaying the artists that are creating genius and groundbreaking work, gallerists are forced to show what sells. Artists are pissed because it looks like the gallerists are selling out, and they sort of are because everybody has to make money somehow. Most artists can't get into galleries, no matter how good they are, so they're not making ends meet and even artists who DO get shows in galleries are fucked because the economy is shit and art isn't really selling like it used to. And don't even get me started on the art fairs. The image in this post is a visual reference from our good buddy W. Powhida. Basically everybody is sort of miserable and considering overthrowing the government and it's all because of money. Which makes right now a VERY interesting and exciting time, as long as you don't distribute torches in Brooklyn before a solution is reached.

The miserable state of the art world currently mirrors the state of my personal life market, which is why my ears perked up at this idea of a Socialist slant on the art market. I'm currently unemployed but interning/volunteering at a couple of places and trying to write. I'm probably the most fulfilled I've ever been in my life. I look forward to waking up every morning and I'm excited but also totally fucking terrified of the future. I never could have said any of these things when I was working just to get a paycheck. But wait, let me back up a little bit, I look forward to waking up every morning except, that is, on rent day. I just started writing so nobody is paying me for anything I write and the places I intern with love the shit out of me but can't afford to pay me because either they're getting likewise fucked by the shitty economy or the grant they applied for hasn't come through. So I have to get a waitressing job. Again. I have to pay my bills. I'm going to try and just keep it part time so that I can keep on fighting the good fight, but these money making jobs have a way of taking over your life. And then what happens when I finally grow up and want to move into a house where I don't share a bathroom with 4 other people? No fucking WAY I can afford that on a part-time waitressing salary. Should I go back to grad school and get and advanced degree so that I can get a better job? I can't really afford that either and it's not even close to a guarantee because that's everyone's plan. So when I'm laying in bed at night digging my fingernails into palms in a cold panic and whispering "WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO" into the darkness, the idea of a government that subsidizes those of us in creative professions seems REAL nice.

Okay, sorry, just a personal tale that might make it acceptable for you to understand why I'm turning into a Commie. In Cube when the socio-economic shit hit the fan in the early 90s state-run organizations were closed and the export of art objects was legalized. This resulted in the inflation of prices of Cuban art thus making it prohibitively expensive for anyone in the domestic market. As the economy regulated the government made huge efforts to bolster the Cuban artistic economy by re-opening museums and creating a centralized gallery system called Genesis. In an effort to get domestic entities to become collectors of Cuba art the government urged that state run organizations allocate some portion of their budget to art acquisition. Moreover, the Ministry has provided better copyright protection for individual artists, and established benefit programs dealing with disability, maternity leave, pensions and death.
Artists may be entitled to retain 12 percent of their salary as a benefit, pegged
at 200 to 500 pesos taken per month, depending on the value of their sales. So not only is the government trying to help you to sell art, it's creating legislation that will make sure you don't go totally broke if you can't work for awhile. Also the centralized gallery system was meant to cut down on the competition between artists for wall space. The galleries get government money so they have some leeway regarding what artists they choose to show. In theory it could be a great way to foster serious creativity. Okay, obviously this all sounds GREAT in theory but it's not the magic bullet. The art world in Cuba is still pretty wonky, and its screwing up the identity of the artists there. Whereas before their art was very often politically charged they now seek to distance themselves from that paradigm. When you're getting benefits from the man it's in pretty poor taste to stage a performance piece about government oppression. (I'll talk a little more about this in my next post) The Genesis galleries were in theory a great idea, however oftentimes the art in these galleries was chosen based on government discretion. SLIPPERY. FUCKING. SLOPE. Essentially the artists of Cuba are sort of government employees but now there's the added complication of trying to stay competitive in the ever-present international art market. What is sold for $500 in NYC is snapped up for $50 in Havana, so what are the benefits of trying to sell in a local economy? It's clearly not perfect down there.

I'm not the first person that's proposed the ideas of picking things piecemeal from a Socialist economic model and applying them to our Capitalist one. Obviously there are all sorts of road blocks and barriers and pros and cons. And what is a couple of failed artists and writers to the vast meat grinder that is the American Dream? Some people are making it big, and they're successful. Many creative people are finding a way to make ends meet without having to get a shitty desk job that pays the bills. I seriously hope I can hold it together to be one of them and I hope we don't lose more talented artists than myself to an economy which emphasizes wealth and prestige over facilitation those who seek to enhance the daily life of the people around them by creating beautiful or thought provoking art. (Oh my God that was so passive aggressive. Whatever. I'm tired...ZZZZZZZ)

The "Have"s and the "Have-not"s

I've recently become sort of addicted to Twitter. I used to be really resistant to it because I thought it was fucking stupid that we all felt the need to update each other regarding our daily activities in 140 characters or less. Then I started working for an organization who figured it would be a good business move to have a Twitter account and I volunteered to "tweet". As I set up the account I was told the best way to get Twitter followers was to "follow" as many people as possible. The organization I work for is involved in the arts so I started there. I began following all of the major art organizations, and through them I started following some of the individual players in the art world. These people are mostly located in NYC and it seems like they're all friends because they're always "re-tweeting" each other. (I don't know how Twitter caught on. I feel like a total douchebag even using the word. Forget turning it into a verb.) These people are artists, art critics, art writers, art bloggers and other types of art orbiters. It's kind of an interesting experience reading the tweets from these people. It's totally voyeuristic and I almost feel like I'm one of them. I know that at anytime I could reply to their tweet and be in on the conversation. The other day there was some tweet banter (I wish "tweet" was a cooler word so I could create and awesome word hybrid between "tweet" and "banter", alas "tweeter"totally sucks) about the artist William Powhida, who is a huge Twitterer himself. (Don't worry, the words Twitter and Tweet will soon fall out of the narrative. If they don't I'll kill myself...myself.) Powhida had recently attracted a lot of attention with one of his drawings which accuses the New Museum in New York of "committing suicide with banality". Essentially Powhida is an artistic rabble-rouser, and as one art writer put it he "watch dogs" the New York art community. His Tweets on this particular day were about the fact that a print of one of his drawings was about to go up for sale on a website called 20X200. The content of the Tweet went something like "POWHIDA PRINT FOR SALE ON 20X200 LIMITED SUPPLY BUY NOW BUYBUYBUYBUY". I went to the site and the prints were only $20 and it was a limited edition print. Powhida is kind of famous. There are only 200. It's only $20. You can bet your buttons that I dug into my big messy purse and began rummaging about for my poor, overwrought credit card. See the thing is I'm totally fucking broke so I picture my poor like Chase card scooting it's little plastic self away from my roving hands in an effort to stem the avalanche of credit card debt which I seem dead set on accumulating. But Chasey couldn't escape, and I bought that print. You are now reading the words of the owner of a limited edition William Powhida print.

The subject matter and aesthetic merit of the print were secondary to my desire to become an "art collector". I've always wanted to be a collector. Art is sacred to me. Ever since my first art history class in high school was totally fucking smitten. I love the idea that someone has the balls to take what is inside of their brain, manifest it physically, then put it on display for all to see. I love the spectacle of art. I love the stories and the personalities. Maybe that's why I love following the art crowd on Twitter. They've got personality, they're interesting, at least they are in 140 characters. William Powhida is especially interesting. He's a really good artist, his drawings are fantastic but more importantly he's always getting the art world to ask questions about itself. I'm not positive to what end, but it's always good to get a theoretical entity to pull it's head out it's ass from time to time. The print I bought is handwritten list of reasons "Why You Should Buy Art". The reasons include "It's a ticket into polite society. Move Up!" and "Free Access to Artists With Every Purchase" and "Art Enthusiasm and Appreciation Are for the Poor". Obviously he's making fun of pretty much everyone here. He's making fun of the art market, he's making fun of museums, he's making fun or art patrons...woah. Wait, he's fucking making fun of ME! I just dropped $20 on this shit and he's fucking mocking me! This dude realizes that there is a whole segment of the population that is looking at the art world with our nose pressed up against the glass. He knows that we want to be a part of this world that is reserved for the incredibly wealthy or the incredibly talented. Either you are rich enough to buy great art or you're the artist getting their shit bought. I think he actually was part of that population at one point. His bio is littered with references to being an "art outsider" and he notes that he attended Syracuse and subsequently Hunter because they were "easy" and "cheap". See? He's not a snob. He's an outsider. Just like us. So why do I feel like I've been totally fucking bamboozled? His Tweet and the whole idea of selling his art in limited edition for very cheap preys upon those of us who are always the art bridesmaid, never the bride. It makes us feel like art collectors. But essentially I could just walk up and take a picture of the Mona Lisa and hang it on my wall and I'd have the same standard of art + $20 less credit card debt.

This is a noticeable trend in consumer culture. It's especially prevalent in art and fashion, but you can see it everywhere. Fashion houses like Sonia Rykiel and Commes de Garcon are doing lines for H&M. High end restaurants are putting out "small plates". Vintners are bottling cheaper wines for greater distribution. But in the end, aren't we all getting what we pay for? I bought a piece of paper with a piece of art printed on it. The Comme de Garcon shirt you buy from H&M is made of the same shitty material that all the shirts they sell are made of. The wine isn't the same grape as the $150 bottle. We're all paying for a name that will make us feel like part of a club. The art world is exclusive. The world of fashion is exclusive. It's a limited number of people who know enough about wine to know why some wines are really expensive. I think people like William Powhida hated the exclusivity of the art world when he was coming up, so he did everything he could to call it out on it's bullshit. He was irreverent and edgy and art people fucking LOVE that shit so they started to pay attention to him. But now that he's actually part of the club his sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek barbs at the "establishment" are more confusing than anything else. By offering me a piece of "art" for $20 you've made me feel like I'm being patronized. I feel like you're giving me handout because you feel bad for me because I don't have the same level of access that you do. Worse, I feel like I'm some part of a greater artistic or cultural experiment that will be unveiled at a later date. I'm going to be some statistic on a big chart that shows the effect that "outsiderism" has on art sales. I know this all sounds paranoid and resentful but are my paranoia and resentment bred by the fucked-up relationship between the haves and the have-nots? This is an old story. The poor are always trying to get what the rich have. They can achieve a version of it, but they then ultimately realize that it's all superficial and they freak the fuck out. Is this a cycle that is destined to repeat itself over and over? Are we headed for a Revolution? Powhida seems to be talking some revolutionary game. He's like the Honore Daumier of his time. But isn't he now sort of that which he rails against? Aren't we all outsiders at one point? Does success mean that we're out of the frying pan of outsiderism into the pan of bourgeois? Will I someday be writing articles for the NYTimes about the bullshit politics of the art world and then go out to dinner with Jeff Koons? WILL I EVER STOP ASKING MYSELF THESE STUPID PSUEDO-EXISTENTIAL CARRIE BRADSHAW-TYPE QUESTIONS?

Hey if anything Powhida's got the ole mental wheels turning, and there's nothing wrong with that. Plus his website is pretty funny so I'm not mad at him. I just don't really know where to put this print. I'm thinking in the shitter, but I don't want my roommates to know what a superficial art sycopant I am.

Fucking Compromise

I'm trying to become an art writer. I'm not sure of the best way to go about it so I've just been sending out submissions willy nilly and seeing what sticks. (Nothing so far). The writing style exemplified on this blog is very different than what I've been sending out to editors, but it's in this style that I feel the most comfortable. Maybe too comfortable. last week I sent a writing sample out to an editor of a local on-line publication and the editor wrote me back on the very same day. I was excited because it's a great art resource and I'd be thrilled to work with them. I replied with a long diatribe in which I opined and waxed poetic on various topics and themes. I also included a link to this blog because I figured it would give them a more comprehensive picture of my writing style. Overall I was pretty proud of my response. 5 days later cut to me freaking the fuck out wondering why the editor hadn't gotten back to me. There could be a thousand reasons so I decide to send him a follow up email, just in case my previous email had gotten lost in the shuffle. After I sent off the follow up I remembered I'd included a link to my blog in the previous response. I felt a twinge and read back over my blog. With horror I remembered a post I'd hastily put up one day with a video having something to do with Matthew Barney. In the post I'd written something flip about abortion and I realized as I re-read it that it was totally fucking offensive. This is what I had sent off to the editor of a publication I'd like to write for. AWESOME. Nestled in among my shining gems of artistic insight and carefully crafted observations regarding area art lectures was this fucking dirty bomb of trashy, crude, cheap humor. My face did that thing where it feels like the sinus cavity is full of lye and I started to scratch my palms with horror.

Bottom line, it was a joke and anyone that know me is aware that I always have and always will make off-color jokes. I sent this dude this blog as a way of giving his a more complete picture of how I write. This blog is part of me too. I can write a semi-scholarly comparative analysis piece and an off color joke about selective abortions with just about the same level of proficiency. But what if that other side of my writing had totally put him off and he could not longer stomach to read anything I write. What if the whole picture of me is not what editors want to see? What if it's not what anybody wants to see? I've had people tell me that I should only write the raunchy jokey stuff and I've had other people tell me it totally puts them off. I know I need to find a balance but I don't know where it is.

This is the hardest thing about being in a creative field. It's one of the hardest things about being a human. Everyone is always telling us to be ourselves and that we shouldn't worry about what other people think, but the main goal of being a writer or an artist or a musician is getting people to like what you make. For one, you gotta sell that shit. I don't want to be a waitress forever. Apparently one's work is always the most successful when it's made for it's own sake, or so motivational speakers, already successful artists and the author of "Art and Fear" would have us believe, but that's how the cycle begins. You continually refer back to that initial success and how nice it felt to be praised and that becomes the carrot. It's like crack. At least some part of each one of us likes to think that what they're putting out into the world is somehow being appreciated. But what happens when the public doesn't like our most honest effort? Do we try to change? Give up? If we change what we make because people don't like it does that make it false?

I freaked out and deleted the abortion comment and combed through all of my posts trying to weed out anything offensive. I censored myself so is my work now dishonest? I'm not making it for it's own sake anymore it's for someone else. I guess I got really upset because I knew what I'd said was kind of shitty and that I didn't stand by it. It wasn't even THAT funny. More than anything the abortion comment had been a slapstick effort to get noticed. It was disingenuous and that never comes across well. But I didn't know I was doing it at the time, so how am I going to prevent myself from doing it in the future? How do I ever really know if I'm really being true to myself at the moment of creation? (If anybody out there is thinking "you just know" I would like to slap you in your face. How's that for offensive?) Or MAYBE and worst-case scenario, the abortion joke had been a golden nugget of my best work and I now I could only see it as a black mark on my record. Like when you introduce the awesome dude you have a crush on to your best friend and she makes fun of his leather coat and you no longer find him attractive at all. I mean, it's a leather jacket. Those are REALLY hard to pull off.

The editor wrote back to me as I was typing this post. He said that he preferred my more thoughtful, scholarly writing as opposed to the "rants" on my blog. I was glad that he liked something, but I was mildly offended and concerned that he didn't like any part of this blog. At some point in my life I'd like to be able to strike a balance between writing like a scholar and writing like myself. I know there is a happy medium to be found. I hope to find that balance in myself. I want to be intelligent and thoughtful and eloquent but at the same time see humor in pretty much everything because there is always humor to be found. (except in this post apparently) I wonder if maybe after I write how people (editors etc.) want me to write for awhile will they then be more open-minded about seeing my other work. Or will I just write for awhile and then fade into the background of every other lame-ass art writer out there? I guess me sending him this blog is kind of like that dude in my college painting class who handed in splatter paintings for every critique. He's a sophomore at UMass Boston and he's trying to paint like Jackson Pollock. You can't just walk into the world as J. Pollock. He studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in NYC before he even discovered liquid paint. There is something to be said for learning the basic and putting in the labor before you get recognized for your own individual style. But it still feels like a compromise and that sucks.

I wrote the editor back and said that this blog was just a place where I go to vent and that I was sorry I'd sent it in the first place. I said that I hoped it didn't offend him at all. As I wrote it I felt myself resenting him because of how I'd handled his constructive criticism. I knew that what I'd written hadn't been my best work but I didn't need him to tell me that, and I didn't know it at the time that I was writing it. I'd asked what he thought and he told me. It's his job he's an EDITOR. Still, I'm hurt. I'm ranting. I can see how this is going to go. I should just start drinking whiskey and move to a cabin in the woods now. Why go through all the effort of spiraling?

Intern/Installation FAIL

I'm currently an intern at an art gallery. They've been kind enough to give me another title (Registrar) because I've overstayed the usual semester and am heading into my 6th month there. This week the gallery directors and manager are at the art fairs in New York so for a couple of days this week I'm there alone which I totally love. It's quiet and I can listen to music and bang out a bunch of busy work. When people come in I'm much more comfortable talking to them when I know nobody is listening. When comfortable I can talk a blue streak and I say some pretty good shit. Today I used the word "didactic". No big deal. (Shines fingernails on front of shirt.) I was talking just such a blue streak to a young male gallery patron today. He was examining a sculpture named "Rift" that's currently on display in the gallery . It's a piece of packed plaster shaped into a tapered rectangle about 5 inches tall. The chalk was packed onto a board which is split down the middle. One side of the board was dropped about 2 inches thus creating the rift. Picture the scene in Indian Jones and the Search for the Holy Grail when someone pisses off God and the ground in the temple splits. But smaller. And white. And in a gallery. The work is about letting things lie as they fall. After the one half of the board drops the piece is done. The artist doesn't go back and retouch, at that point it's out of his control. The piece isn't fixed in any way so it's basically just a pile of loose chalked packed together and sitting on a pedestal. But shaplier. And more conceptual. Back to the chap examining it. I was explaining the work and he was looking closely at the sculpture. I turned to look at my computer for a moment, and then looked back and homeboy was KNUCKLE DEEP in the gypsum. He pulled his fingers out really quickly, froze and looked at me with his mouth wide open. I'm sure I looked just as shocked. "The sign says 'Please Touch'!" he stammered. I got up from my chair and walked slowly over to where he was standing. Directly in front of him on the podium that "Rift" was crafted upon is a sign that very clearly reads 'Please Don't Touch'. I point to it and look at his hand which is covered in chalk. I still can't really talk at this point. He was equally as speechless. He begins to stammer an apology and mentions he thought it odd that there was a sign inviting him to touch a piece of art. I managed to laugh as I fought back tears and went into the back room to get him a paper towel to wipe his hand off. I pick up where I left off in my explanation of the work, but I knew at that point it sounded forced. Mostly because I was almost crying. He wanted to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible and I needed to call my fucking boss. He continued to apologize as he walked out the door. I hated the idea that another person was scared to walk into a gallery ever again, but this dude had every reason to be. I mean, how can you read a sign so WRONG? He should be scared to be pretty much EVERYWHERE, and we(THE WORLD) should be more scared because his mind reads things in OPPOSITE. It's like an episode of House. In my humble opinion he may be a menace to society. He gets into his car, sees a red octagonal sign and SPEEDS THE FUCK UP. He walks around pulling the tags off of mattresses. When the oxygen mask pops out of the ceiling of the airplane he grabs one away from a kid and covers his own mouth. This man walks down the street popping the silica gel packets from his recent running shoe purchase like Clorets. He must be stopped! I should have called the police. But they probably would have tripped over the other un-fixed chalk sculpture in their effort to nab the clumsy assailant.
I suppose there is something to be said about the fact this this dude kind of illustrated an artistic point. The work was impermanent by nature. It will never leave the gallery and when he de-installs his show in a week it will be destroyed. I talked to the artist about it and he's going to come fix it next week. These things happen with this type of work. He had a piece at a museum and the cleaning crew vacuumed it up by mistake. That being said, this is another reason why a gallery curator might look at you funny the next time you walk into their space. You present a clear and present danger to any type of art installation that might be hanging out around the gallery. I was at the Pompidou Center in Paris last month and they have a Tara Donovan toothpick cube there. They only allowed 3 people in the room with it at once and you can bet the docents were watching you like a hawk the whole time. At one point one of the docents comes in dragging a more senior member of the museum staff. As she gesticulated wildly and exclaimed in French she pointed to one corner of the cube which definitely looked less pointy than the rest. Apparently somebody in a big coat had been careless. These thing happen I guess, but FUCK why did it have to be when I working alone??

Welcome to ArtDick

Art criticism can be pretentious. Most IS pretentious. This is coming from someone who just had to Google the word "criticism" to get the correct spelling. This blog will house no genius but it is long on opinion and that's the same goddam thing that every well respected curator, gallery director and art critic has. Have you ever looked up the word "art" in the dictionary? It's a clusterfuck. There are no answers there. And if the dictionary can't tell us what art is, then we'll be goddamed if we're going to let to the bespectacled weenies who prowl the white box galleries of Soho tell us that what we think about art is wrong.

Art has an ego. There's no denying that. Art also has it's reasons. Since the dawn of time man has used art as a means of communication. Cavemen drew pictures on the walls to tell the future spelunkers of the world about how their day went. The Venus of Willendorf was a fertility idol or something. In early Christian times everybody was totally fucking illiterate so pictures were how people "read" the Bible. Then one day art failed to serve a purpose. Someday someone sat down and painted a flower, and it wasn't an object of worship and it wasn't a map and it wasn't illuminated and it wasn't conveying any logical information. And someone walks up behind the dude who drew the flower and goes "what the FUCK is that?" and dude goes "Um, its a flower?" and other dude goes "Yeah, but WHY?" and ever since then art has been explaining itself to society. It sucks to have to explain yourself. In the 1960s Mark Rothko called the typical audience of his art "vulgar eyes". He and the famed art critic Clement Greenberg thought that any sort of "authentic art" required some sort of preparatory work, and at the very least an incredibly open mind. Now that's bullshit. We should all be able to view art in elementary school. Industrial lather operators can go the museum and wax eloquent about Piss Christ if they want to. But Rothko and Greenberg's stance comes for a vast well of artistic insecurity based on CONSTANT requests for explanation and definition and validation. It's like when you go home for Thanksgiving and you just want to eat Turkey and hang out with your little cousins who idolize the shit out of you and then your aunt who totally loves you and just want to talk to you sits down and goes "So ARTHUR tell me about your life!!" and your life, which before you were confronted by this loving assault seemed great, but as soon as you're forced to explain it to anybody else it seems like you're totally doing it wrong and you have to make a bunch of shit up to pad your story and then you get frustrated because you just fucking LIED to Aunt Patty about applying to Grad School and then you resent Patty for making you lie and suddenly your gently aged aunt and her graying bowl cut are no longer endearing but rather a monster which is trying to eat your brain and you hate her and your life. That or it's like when you tell a joke and someone says "I don't get it". i fucking hate that. So imagine being an artist, and realizing when you're little that you just love to create stuff but then you go to art school and people start trying to get you to explain and defend your art. And then society is waiting for you when you graduate, and the art establishment who actually loves you and wants you to succeed sits down next to you and says "So ARTHUR tell me about your life!!" and Society becomes a monster who wants to eat your head. Artist have to go through a LOT of bullshit to become successful. They don't just show up in galleries. They work their fucking asses off and put there proverbial dicks on the chopping blocks time and time again to get a shot at actually making money. So when you walk into a gallery, and you see a piece that looks like a crumpled up piece of paper and you smirk at it and snicker, and the gallery manager gives you a condescending look you don't deserve it. And the gallery manager should not have looked at you that way. But if the gallery manager is worth his or her salt at all they're on the artists' side, and they're pulling for them. They know what the artist went through to get into the gallery, so hopefully that condescending look is on their behalf. And if the gallery is any good there's an excellent chance that if you walked up to the gallery owner and asked what the fuck was up with the crumpled up piece of paper they'd tell you about the artist's motivations, and you'd probably respect it. But the conversation rarely gets that far because most people don't feel comfortable trying to understand art because of the ego. And why should they? Because art is fucking awesome, that's why. Art is a physical extension of humanity. It's part of us. It's a creation based on something the human mind conceived of, and what are we as humans if we can't create what this big grey bullshit inside our skull comes up with? It's our contribution to this planet. We're constantly taking from it. Art is what we can give. It's time to get past arts prom queeny exterior. The prom queen was just a girl too. The quarterback had premature ejaculations just like all the other dudes at school. We're all in this shit together. Might as well talk about it, right?

We're not a part of the art establishment, but we have as much to say as anyone and maybe we can even shed a new light on things. A new, sophomoric, vulgar ignorant light. But a new light all the same. You know how when you need to say something you need to get a weight off of your chest? Well we think the lack of communication between the art establishment and the average viewing public is more like a weight on your dick, because that sucks more than a weight on your chest. So therefore we need to get something off our ArtDick...