146

Drawing (146) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Lifestyle nonsense: the blurred boundaries between lifestyle and artistic product, generally celebrated as 'life' that, as we know from Adorno, 'doesn’t live', have become legendary since D’Annunzio’s doings at the very latest. The fact that he was able to indulge his sense of kitsch and drug addiction as a pampered rich man doesn’t mean his endeavors are above comparison with those of, say, Jack Smith, who carefully concealed his lucrative connections. The latter was aware of the normative power of street credibility, the other of the binding force of envy; in both cases, one might talk of arrested development. Many artists live in poverty, but since when has poverty been an art form? Art isn’t ennobled via poverty either. The struggle for recognition all too often pitched before the front doors of the bourgeoisie and their politicians like a beggar on parade is an act of authoritarian fixing. Analyzing poverty and the reasons for it is far from art per se, but rather an academic undertaking first and foremost. Depicting poverty can indeed be an art form, however." (From: arsenal, december 20).

(1993) 

Uncle Fishhead. 

 

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