Real Art by Peter Bagge, a four-page comic questioning everything everybody ever questioned about modern art. It's amusing, even though I don't agree with many of the ideas there. Indeed, there's bad art produced by bad artists and bad artisans, but often people who attack the World of Art have no bigger arguments than someone who, without knowing the language, reads a poem written in czech and then says it's all gibberish and crap. Ladies and gentlemen, Art is a language. If you don't know the language, quit bashing art. Here's just a pointer: the main force behind mid to late twentieth century art was the drive to build unmarketable, unexhibiteable objects. It was a collective, almost scientific experiment, a task: to come up with anti-art. Of course, Marcel Duchamp as the comic strip clearly states took a piss early on and museums came up with multiple copies and exhibitions of his inverted urinol (aka 'The Fountain'). Galleries found they could film performance art and then sell the reels. Marchands funded huge multimillion dollar works of landscape art which would be impossible to sell and to move and that everyone could see, but they eventually made up by selling millions of dollars worth of memorabilia. Video-art was meant to be copied and pirated so that everyone owned it, so somebody copyrighted it and sold copy-protected DVDs for $2500 apiece.
So it makes perfect sense somebody asked a friend to shoot his arm with a rifle and then called the event art. It makes sense somebody placed a crucifix in a flask full of urine. It makes sense somebody spent two hundred thousand dollars to bore a hole in the ground one kilometer deep, filled it with molten iron, and then sealed the top with dirt and grass so nobody could find it. All those artists were yelling "sell this, you pricks!". And eventually someone found a way to sell the works and get a profit. And this is why this kind of senseless-at-first art is important: it shows there's something fundamentally very wrong about our ultra-speculative capitalist system (and that all attempts to fix it were blunt — at best).
Of course, Peter Bagge scores a few important points. Meaningless painters such as Picasso, Mondrian or Kandinsky were indeed skilled draughtsmen before questioning everything and going primal, or minimalist, or abstract. Picasso worked hard as hell and did thousands of sketches before painting, Mondrian or Kandinsky had almost scientific approaches to their latter work and studied hard to paint a single line. Soon after, every wannabe artist took shortcuts. Jackson Pollock took years to achieve his method, plus a lot of practice. That's what should count — the work, the research. But now everyone can pierce a hole in a bucket full of paint and voilá — Insta-Pollock. No, Pollock did make art. You are making a decorative object that resembles Pollock's paintings. Of course, the art critics should be the first to point this out — some people can do certain things because they worked hard to get to the concept or to the process, while others can't do similar things because they just took a shortcut. Meaning, are plagiarising. However, art critics are indeed the first to be fooled. They mistake the craftsmanship that Pollock did have for a supposed absense of it, and become convinced craftsmanship and hard work are bad things.
Here's the big news for you wannabes: you don't want to become an artist. Meaning: you can't want to be an artist. Meaning: the best you can do is to study and practice a craft, or a multitude of crafts. You go to an art school to become an artisan. Painter — artisan. Sculptor — artisan. Filmmaker — artisan. Performance artisan. Digital media artisan. Being an artist is a social status that isn't yours to declare. It's other people who declare you an artist. The media. A dealer. People who see the result of your craft — painted, performed, projected, written or just conceptualized.
Other common myths about art include: artists are bohemians. Untrue for 99% of them. Celebrated artists worked hard. Even Picasso only became a bon-vivant when he started to enjoy fame. Good artists are like good athletes. They practice, they practice, and they practice even more. There's no production if you're all drunk. Of course there are pseudo-bohemian fuckers sucking cock to shortcut to recognition. But eventually that's too thin and precarious, as there'll be little work to be seen. Another myth: all art is good. Sorry, nope. Even in an important museum there'll be bad art, even if you have a clue about the language involved. Because bad is your subjective judgement. Never forget this. So you shouldn't expect a work of art to be part of an absolute good more than you expect a pair of trainers.
The author of the comic ends it saying "who needs modern art museums?". Everybody does. Never mistake applied craftsmanship (say, industrial design) for art. To deny art institutions is like denying research labs but then demanding the practical benefits of science. Everyone who ever read about the Bauhaus knows how entangled art and applied crafts are. Do you like the way your iPod looks? It'd look different if it weren't for 60s and 70s minimalist artists. No advanced society can exist without supporting art. Most institutions will steal, of course. Of course, many subsidized artists are no better than bank robbers. Of course ,there are much better ways to spend money. But there are also worse ways. And no matter how insane artists may be (another myth — mistaking alternative perspectives with insanity), there's no better way to restore a little bit of sanity than a quiet walk through the corridors of a museum. If you're not violent about it.···
