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Shadows of The Self
…and then I think about the art that is in every so called important collection now -Warhol, Lichtenstein, Ruscha, Basquiat, Koons, Hirst, Prince, etc… it’s disgusting. Art used to have a function: it was a bridge to a place, a state, an awareness, an experience beyond experience… now everything is like an advertisement, a commercial for itself and the smug self serving collector class. It’s absurd, ridiculous. Wealthy people have always collected art. Patronage is a necessary part of the equation. But the art used to MEAN something.
The ascendancy of Donald Trump and Larry Gagosian, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool… it’s part of the same phenomenon. A triumph of cynicism, sarcasm, commercialism, vacuity and blather over transformation, over human possibility. It’s the art of resignation.
— Adam Shaw
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…Is our work solely to make people adapt to totalitarianism, to do what they are told to do? It has always been these two processes that have led to the most dangerous of outcomes. When freedom and autonomy are taken, and individuals can no longer be individuals, when critical thinking has ceased, we have entered a dreadful place. Maybe we are already there.
What exactly is a person? We live, but what does it mean to actually live? Who are we? Where are we going? What exactly are we doing? Must we do anything…
