The Gutter Art Critic

This year’s election for mayor and city council was one of the stealthiest campaigns that I have ever witnessed. Unless one was an ever vigilant follower or watch dog of the local political scene, all one saw one day were a handful of yard signs and an eerie silence in the press and media. As if the fact that the political arena here as much as elsewhere has become a medley of circus freaks and reality tv-like “celebrities” was not enough, the campaign itself had devolved into a he said she said argumentation about why there is so much debt still in the air when all we have tried to do is to make this place more tourist friendly and more developer happy, a tried and true formula for making money. But is that really so? If anything, recent history has always shown that late capitalism is a process by which individuals are compelled to take as much advantage of a given situation and run as soon as the money is made. Was this not the case with most of the “development” in Asheville?

The Question For years, Asheville has been seen as an arts destination. The reasons are simple; lots of artists result in lots of art produced which enters the market, which draws in the money, which ultimately draws in more artists and the circle slowly but surely perpetuates itself. Whether or not artists can squeek out a living in such conditions is an entirely different question from the one I will be asking today and it can be found in a conversation, which this article will try to dovetail into, from some two years ago printed in the Xpress. Similar topics have been raised later on Craigslist and Ashevegas. The question that will be dealt with here is the state and nature of contemporary art, its (non)existence, and its representation here in Asheville. Contemporary art seems to have been largely redefined in Asheville. Whether this is a mistake or a concerted effort is unclear. What is clear however is that within this definition are included various practices such as crafts

Connie Bostic’s exhibition comes at a particularly interesting time when the conversation about gun control has been rekindled by the violent events of the past couple years, especially the school shootings and mass murders in places like Connecticut and Colorado and the craziness of violent outbursts by right wing extremism in Norway, punctuated and/or capped off by the obscene pronouncements and gestures by the NRA. It is not surprising that the spokespeople for the NRA issued such crazy platitudes like “the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. This is the pinnacle to which their own ideological fortitude extends. Let us not for a second forget that the ideological underpinnings of such a pronouncement lies in the mythology laid down at the dawn of the American revolution. America is the only place that has actually codified its mythology in a legislative document, the constitution and its amendments. Mythology begat as law. Figures like Mit

I will try and piggyback a little bit on what I thought was the most asked question, or at least what I felt was the most perplexing image or idea, during the night of the opening of my latest solo show “apotheosis”. The image is that of the Buzludzha monument and I have described the piece this way “On a lone mountaintop in a Bulgarian national park sits one of the most perplexing and perhaps ironic monuments to late 20th century socialism. Built in the waning years of Eastern European socialism, when the writing on the walls was already running out of walls, this monument celebrated the revolutionary spirit in such a way as if the sheer spectacle would be able to carry through the intended ideology, that everything is just great the way it is. The hyperinflated ego of such a project constitutes the dramatization of what occurs naturally in every culture faced with its own impending doom. Instead of reflection and reassessment, we get bombastic displays of confidence in the exist

Let us turn to some philosophical and perhaps metaphysical underpinnings that drive the creation of art. On the one hand we have the monetized system of art, which says that ultimately what is of greater value must by the same virtue be a greater work of art. This is the contemporary formula of the market system. The flaws are inherent and one does not have to go too far to see and understand that flaw, because not every artwork that commands a bigger price is necessarily better than another of lesser or no value at all. Value in dollars does not equal value of importance or value of meaning. Damien Hirst can have his assistants work around the clock producing one dimensional paintings and sculptures that will sell at exorbitant prices at commercial galleries and at auctions, (maybe not so much these days) but he cannot imbue those works with an equal amount of meaning when the works and the production of them are itself meaningless. Warhol was much closer to the truth about this

What role does art serve? Or what role does art serve to the artist and the public? Could we instead ask what role does the artist serve to art? Art is a much greater entity than the artist will ever be, so why does it so often seem to be subservient to the artist and his ego? This inversion is only palpable if we look at the way the media portray art and artists. The relegation of the profession of art, to monetization and therefore to the ranking on the scale of value happens by way of subverted commodification. When the news agencies like MSN or NBC print on their web sites articles about which degrees will get you the least amount of money in the market today, one has to question the motives for printing such material. Of course, topping the list of degrees is Fine Art, Philosophy, Psychology, etc, no one would suspect anything less. The list remains more or less the same every year. What this shows however is not what the agencies propose should be a deterrent to those seek