Doggy Dialysis

Turnering the Stomach

Time once again for the Turner Prize nominees; proving once again that taking money under false pretenses is not a dead art.

Art-Eggcident

Because nothing says "art" like a cheap to conceive, but expensive to execute and impossible to live with visual pun.

Fat Art

Your moment of culture: Ozzy Osbourne in lard!

I think I'm getting a migraine.

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Ironic how an abstract cartoon can so neatly skewer modern art as the dumb show and pretense that it is.

Context is All

A collection of photographs of gay men? That's truly art and worthy of a major museum exhibit... Unless, that is, the artist is a woman. And the men are Muslims. In Mohammed masks. And the museum is in the Netherlands. In that case, it's one cancelled exhibit and one artist literally on the run for her life.

Welcome to Europe 2008.

Dhimmitude in the Art World

The utter moral fraudulence of modern art revealed:

Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.

Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works.

“I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

Anytime an "artist" starts bleating on about "speaking truth to power", "pushing the envelope", being "transgressive" and how "courageous" they are, feel free to respond with slow, sarcastic clapping.

Action Jackson

Real or robot?

Ladies and gentlemen. For your entertainment and edification, allow us to present robo-Jackson Pollock!

It paints! It hunts for Sarah Connor!

STLToday.com says about the robot artiste,

Action Jackson is a useful example of how the line between man and machine — and between creativity and cookbook automation — can become blurry.

Creativity doesn't come into it. Actually, it's more of a useful example of what a flat-out fraud art has become since it decided to chuck out six thousand years of craft and insight as if it was so much old rope. All that is left is sham, pretence, and dumb-show in the service of fatuous pseudo-theories that hang in the air like the Isle of Laputa.

Put it another way, it's all a huge scam to cover up for talentless "artists" who can't draw fingers.

Not "Seeing is Believing," you ninny, but "Believing is Seeing." For modern art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.

Tom Wolfe

Update: And now, you too can be Jackson Pollock. It's easy and it's fun!

And Your Point Is?

Australian aboriginal artists are being lured into producing works with the promise of drink and drugs.

Sounds like a lot of theatres I've worked for.

Warring Camps

As the Netherlands fights for its life against Jihadists who regard Dutch society as morally bankrupt, Amsterdam seems dead-set on proving them right by erecting a statue that will be "a tribute to all prostitutes all over the world"

Dutchmen caught in the middle can only hope both sides can lose.

Turnering the Stomach

Who wins the Turner prize will be announced on Monday.

One of the entries is literally a pile of rubbish, which is remarkably apt.