So in tough economic times, people sell their art to make ends meet. Schools are no exceptions. Brandeis University may be saving itself by selling the art from its museum’s collection (Link to Report).
Okay, this is where your art world values come in – and there seems to be a deep disconnect between what art people advocate others do with their art and what those art people endorse in art.
Many people in the art world endorse the art of MIke Kelley. I don’t really like his art, but I get what he is doing and understand his role, historically, et cetera blah blah blah. But I watch people who rave about him and we all really know they are just into him because he is a success in the marketplace. Mike Kelley’s art is special because it is antithetical to 99% of art out there and yet it still IS art. This is quite a triumph – to make something that fulfills the criteria of art by espousing the values absent in art. The people who really get Kelley and dig him are people who fetishize banal evil and are themselves pretty icky fuckers immersed in a slow self-destruction anyway so why not laugh about the pain, cruelty and misery visited upon others. Jerks, frankly, but you gotta at least admire territory staked out on an edge if only to know what the heck to stay away from.
But this is not about Mike Kelley, this is about his success. See, people who DEMAND that Brandeis MUST maintain its collection and museum, well these are people who treat art and art collections like church. When I was a kid, you got communion and it was a big time sin to play with that bread wafer. You ingested it on your way back to your seat and then you prayed. So art Nannies want to tell us that art collections are sacred and that deaccessioning would be like pulling out that wafer and playing with it like a strand of spaghetti while the whole congregation watched.
They implore us all that the sacred must not be defiled. And that is okay – but only if they really believed it, they would not simultaneously approve of so much contemporary art that is inherently POSITED AGAINST THE NOTION OF THE SACRED – art that Mike Kelley’s anti-aesthetic is emblematic of.
If you have approvingly reviewed artists whose fundamental aesthetic is a breaking down of barriers, a deconstructing of institutions, a rebellious gesture against the academy – any positive acclaim to these stances, these artists, these aesthetics and their influence, any support for the PROFANE while you simultaneously demand that institutions maintain their collections as SACRED means you want to rave about the trendy and exciting and pseudo-edgy as a commentator but you don’t REALLY want the applecart upset.
You want your holy frickin’ museums but you still want to hang out with the cool kids. And now the institution is up shit creek you have the audacity to demand it be held to a higher standard than you yourself hold art up to when you rave about the slacker, the terrorist, the political revolutionary, the cool outlaw… get it?
There is a long list of contemporary artists who I could have substituted for Kelley here. A long, unavoidable list of talented genius artists who embrace the insanity of boundary-free contrarianism as their only medium, implicitly free of values or conscience.
Dear Brandeis: Please sell your art, save your school and ignore anyone with a relationship to contemporary art who tells you otherwise. Contemporary art as it exists now is built on the premise of swindle, cajole, embracing the contrary and dissolving boundaries. The contemporary art world has no values or standards to be held as an example for your school to follow – you are free to deaccession in the name of preserving your values and institution. Nobody associated with the art world has any moral ground or basis of integrity or civility from which they can agree to operate and thus NONE OF THEM are in any position to offer an opinion about your behavior in these tense economic times.