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Friday, September 20, 2002 |
What if it Ain't Art?
The Raven's post on The Art of Terrorism turned over a big rock and revealed a colony of nasty stuff growing underneath - specifically, the yawning gap between the language of contemporary art theory and the sensibilities of the public, especially after 9/11. Rave notes with justifiable ambivilence that Damien Hirst's comments about the attacks as art and the public display of the statue of the "Tumbling Woman" are both thoughtful responses and completely tasteless and immoral.
The problem is that art theory has painted itself into a dialectical corner in which matters of taste, concern for the audience, and the moral or sentimental qualities of a work are completely beside the point. The "art" inheres only in the use of a particular medium to confront the audience with something important, ironic, absurd or outrageous. Extra points given for novelty and ideological content. Consequently, art theory, for its own esoteric reasons, needs to incorporate terrorism and objectively tasteless reactions to it into its vocabulary. It's when it does it in public - as art compulsively does - that the academic issues come into conflict with the views of a larger public that neither understands nor especially cares about what's at stake on a detatched intellectual level.
The bottom line is that whatever contempt the art-world holds for the unwashed masses, it's just plain stupid to ignore the impact that "inside" works (like the WTC sculpture) or observations (like Hirst's) will have in the plain light of day. Even in context, they're iffy. But once Fox News gets hold of them, it's going to be torch-and-pitchfork time.
Further thoughts...
3:44:40 PM 
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Bush Can Run, But He Can't Hide
Our commander-in-chief graces the cover of Runner's World magazine this month in a story called "Secrets of our Fastest President" (and Runner's World is probably the only media outlet where you will hear him called that). Unfortunately, it's probably a better interview than the one he gave 60 Minutes last week. Maybe we should settle our differences with Iraq by having the leaders square off in an 800-meter dash.
12:04:14 PM
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"Froggystan Sends Their Best Author to Trial - What a Farce!"
My interest in L'affaire Houellebecq turned up this wonderful headline from FuckFrance.com ("Imbeciles, the lot of 'em!"). Amazingly, there are posts in French in the threaded discussion.
9:04:17 AM
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Warning: Blog Hackers
A very disconcerting thing just happened. One of my readers pointed out a non-working link on my page, and when I followed it, I was hijacked to a spam site. Tech-savvy readers, please help: How the hell did this happen, and what can I do to prevent it?
8:36:25 AM
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Ravin' About the Raven
The blogger known as The Raven has put together an eye-pleasing site featuring tart observations and an admirable consistency of tone. Thursday's piece on the hazards of public sculpture to the blind, and Wednesday's exceprts from William Shatner's new book are typical of this bird's well-chosen nesting.
8:10:20 AM
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The Empire Strikes Back
Is Jonathan Last's piece in the Weekly Standard a wonderfully subtle stealth parody of contemporary conservative "wit and wisdom" or just the most depressing thing ever written about Star Wars?
8:01:36 AM
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