Modern Artistes

I loved the story a few weeks back about the Museum elevator operator in Holland who threw out two painted cans because he thought that they were trash and it turned out they were artwork. Like, who knew?

A lift technician at a museum in the Netherlands mistakenly threw away a piece of artwork made to look like two empty beer cans.

“All the good times we spent together” by French artist Alexandre Lavet may look like it belongs in a trash can at first glance, but closer inspection reveals it is in fact “meticulously hand-painted with acrylics, with each detail painstakingly replicated,” the LAM Museum said in a statement earlier this month.

“For the artist, the cans symbolise cherished memories shared with dear friends,” added the statement from the museum, which is based in the town of Lisse, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Amsterdam.

“While evenings spent enjoying drinks may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, they ultimately embody precious moments of connection.”

The worker, who the museum said was covering for the regular technician, could perhaps be forgiven their error given the fact that the beer cans were displayed in a glass lift shaft, as though they were left behind by construction workers.

I read a story like this and it just reaffirms the utter stupidity of the lion's share of what passes for modern art today.

A cynical con job, devoid of artistic merit, craftsmanship or vision, the sheer vapidity is overwhelming. Thankfully, this great artistic masterpiece was rescued from a trash bag and re-installed.

I think the art market today is controlled by the hedge funds and speculators. The work is largely terrible and has been for a long time. Koons, Scharf, Hirst, Warhol, Banksy, the majority of the work is total shit, in my humble opinion.  I think you can thank people like Eli Broad for perpetuating this fraud and the emperor's ugly new clothes.

I used to exhibit the FADA show in Los Angeles and I saw these ninety day wonders arrive on the scene that could barely hold, let alone load a a brush and whose work was singularly dreadful. The kind you find in Miami and Basel, I suppose. 

But the upper class, whose taste tends to run in reverse proportion to their pocketbook in some perverse hydrostatic equation, are titillated by bad art and have been for a very long time. Thiebaud, a man who never stopped trying to improve his craft and push his personal boundaries concerning light, color and shadow, was, in my opinion, the last great modern artist and he is now gone.

Of course, not all non objective abstraction is terrible, some of it was and is great but there's not a lot left to be done in that particular arena so we are now back to painting cans, I suppose.

We no longer have artists trying to create masterpieces like Vermeer or Titian or Hopper, instead we have a bunch of idiots taping bananas to walls and painting soda cans.

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I was at a wealthy relative's home in Texas when he showed me his new photo, it cost a fortune, many thousands. It showed a man cutting a very valuable piece of apparel with a chainsaw. "Isn't it wonderful," he asked me. I was dumbfounded, didn't know what to say, totally lost on me this forty thousand dollar photograph. Perhaps if I was rich it would have made more sense?

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Which reminds me of a story.

About thirty years ago, my late brother Buzz and I, on a whim, decided to visit the La Jolla Contemporary Museum of Art.

A janitor had accidentally left a broom leaning against a wall. 

I decided to take the bait and playing docent, delivered a twenty minutes dissertation on the utter beauty of the artist's creation, the sheer deliciousness of the juxtaposition of the diagonal form in tangency to the white wall and blah, blah, blah.

A security guard finally figured out that I didn't have the proper badge and ushered us out. But I really had them going for a while. Drew myself a nice little crowd.

When I last did FADA, an L.A. dealer, I think it might have been Rutberg, a terrific guy and great marketer, had a pile of rocks delivered and spread on the floor of his booth.

"Jack" I says, "Who in their right mind is going to buy this rock crap?" This creation of some flavor of the week South American artist.

Joke was on me, the beaming and venerable art dealer sold the thing out.

What the hell do I know?

Guess I am not cut out for this modern art business. Too hard to keep a straight face.

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I ventured down this rabbit hole of thought after Robin posted this story on Linked In. Banksy's former agent is really taking some credit. Did you know that Banksy made it okay for ordinary people to like art?

“Banksy, myself, and a couple of others, set up a company called Pictures On Walls and we really wanted to make cheap affordable art for the masses,” Mr Lazarides said.“For a very short moment in time we made a difference, we made it okay for ordinary people to like art… It’s by far the proudest thing I’ve done. And by far the most powerful thing I think he’s done.”

Like, who knew?