A Million Dollar Piece of Crap

A Story by

benzine

There have been hundreds of artistic styles and movements throughout the course of art history, and many of them have been influential on society. I know this sounds like a term paper, but stay with me. Unfortunately not all of the styles and movements were acts of brilliance; many of them (In my opinion) just plain suck. I'm not saying they are not influential or should not be considered art, but I think they are just poor excuses for art.

For starters for those, who know any works by Jackson Pollock, may see where I am coming from on this article. He was an artist of the 1950's, who practiced a artistic style known as drip painting. It's just like it sounds, he dripped paint onto a canvas. The result were paintings that looks like after product of the plastic you put on the floor when you are painting a room. It is a bunch of paint that is thrown around and dripped on a canvas. I could train a monkey to do that, but somehow Pollock notched his place in art history. I have nothing against abstract art. Abstract art just lacks a recognizable subject. A piece of art could be done with incredible skill and still be abstract. However in the case of Pollock, not only is there no subject, but no skill either.

Now at least Pollock's work could be considered as art. There was also and still is an art movement called performance art. This stuff here is seriously f*cked up in many cases. In one case an artist sat at the end of a little corridor with a tarantula at the other end. As the spider crawled towards him, he ripped out his hair and blew it at the spider slowing the spider's progress towards him, supposedly symbolizing some deep idea. This is something that you could probably find a patient at the nearest asylum doing, but this guy is considered at brilliant artist. In another case a so-called artist had himself shot in the hand, his pain being his expression. The same man wrapped himself in a tarp and layed in the middle of a Las Angeles freeway. These don't seem like the actions of a sane man, but more like actions taken by a performer on MTV's Jackass(But even those guys aren't that stupid or crazy).

Recently a type of art called "Outsider Art" has come on to the scene. This type of art is done by people, who are not artists. That in itself I quite alright. I know many people who are not artists, but have a good deal of artistic ability. However in many of these cases the art is nothing more than crap thrown around on a piece of paper by some drunken redneck. So why is it that I have to go to college and pay a buttload of money to be considered an artist, but any moron with a gallon of paint and a canvas can become the next Van Gogh.

All of this pisses me off personally as an art student. I find that the art world jumps all over what's new and different regardless of the skill level needed or the saneness of the act. The art collectors don't help with their consumption of this crap. They pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of this stuff, just because it's the new craze in the art world. It upsets me just thinking about all the B.S. that composes the art world. Much like the rest of society art is dictated by what the general mass wants. Anything else is not accepted, and overlooked. In conclusion I think that art should reflect the skill of the artists and not the deep down emotional scarring. So leave the paint splattering to the preschoolers and the insane acts of self-mutilation to the BDSM freaks.

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