[vannrox]

This is a great site. I urge you all to visit it.

[Mike Darancette]

The winner then chooses an item to put on display. The prize is worth £20,000 (about $30,000). This year's award went to 33-year- old Martin Creed for an exhibit that consisted of an empty room with lights that flicker on and off every five seconds.

I have been plagiarized and I demand the prize. This display is exactly like my first off-base housing 33 years ago.

[demosthenes the elder]

Thank you for posting this. I am often embroiled in arguments with those who seem to believe that words have no set meanings, and thus that the 2500 year old stable root meaning of the word "art" as "skill" can be argued against, and that consequently one cannot objectively judge the merits of any particular work or genre. You have provided me with some excellent supplemental ammunition.

[Blood of Tyrants]

As read into the Congressional Record Thursday, January 10, 1963, Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35, http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

Item 22.

Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

[Blood of Tyrants]

Also, Item 23 from The Naked Communist,

Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

[jigsaw]

What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

This writing is art!

What wonderful imagery!

[Ditter]

I am surprized at the Tate. I have been to some wonderful exhibits of fabulous works of art there. This prize winner reminds me of an exhibit my art school painting class attended. It consisted of dead tree branches constructed into a frame from which rubber chickens were hung. It was for sale I wish I remembered the price.

[LibertyGirl77]

I love John Derbyshire. He's like a genius version of Dave Barry (whom I also love).

[1john2 3and4]

that IS a great site, thank you!

several years ago, i helped a VERY talented sculptor, cyd player, and she gave me a book to read called; "Modern Art and the Death of a Culture" by h. r. rookmaaker....quite a read, and it really opened my eyes. i found it here; http://ebiz.netopia.com/clpress/culturethearts/ which ALSO seems to be a site worth bookmarking....

btw, if anyone knows where cyd is (she WAS, back in the late '80's, in the williamsburg, va. area), id LOVE to get back in touch with her. regards, john

[Egregious Philbin]

I hope there is a middle ground between the absurdity of the Turner Prize and the reactionary Art Renewal Center. I find both extremes absurd.

[Kevin Curry]

You can get away with that in the visual arts, but not in literature, where "obscure" only ever means one thing: badly written.

I dunno. Ulysses is obscure in parts, but is considered by these critics to be one of the great novels of the 20th Century.

Finnegan's Wake is not merely obscure but wholly incomprehensible, but the writing is still all Joyce--and considered by the critics to be a great piece of writing. I consider it verbal white noise.

[San Jacinto]

LOL! This is better than anything I have ever read in The Onion.

[Darksheare]

I often have people tell me that I should try to "Do something with [my] drawings."
My response is to tell them that the only way I could possibly make a living, or make any money worth trying to make out of it, would be to draw a nun being raped in a church.
And that is the unfortunate truth about the 'art' world. They do not care about form and beauty, or even humor. It's all mindless drivel that the 'intellectuals' try to pander off as being 'deeply spiritual/ thought provoking/ radical/ blah blah blah'.
There was a sculptor that was told that his figures weren't art. The NEA states, in their handouts and propaganda, that the 'classical' idea of art is dead.

So this doesn't sruprise me at all, that such idiocy lurks out there. And I applaud you for finding the article that has the guts to be p.o'd with the current situation.