Untidy Creatures
on 08/09/2014 at 01:38 AM
No. This is shit, almost literally.
And what makes it worse is that it isn’t even NEW shit, it’s somebody else’s recycled crap:
“Complex Pile”, by Paul McCarthy, on exhibit here in Hong Kong, is “Complex Shit” from Bern with some of the pieces rearranged.Makes you wonder who the bigger sucker is. But hey, when even the art magazines don’t buy it any longer ...
For anti-social perversity has become standard avant-garde operating procedure—it’s even better than irony, which in the end is self-defeating, a Pyrrhic victory over its target, and which has lost its novelty—and the works of McCarthy and Serrano are the dregs of avant-garde art. The avant-garde is defunct and obsolete, and its stick-it-up-your-ass attitude—perfectly exemplified by Mapplethorpe’s photograph of himself with the handle of a whip stuck in his asshole (thus anality is “in,” although Mapplethorpe turns his head to see the viewer’s presumably shocked face, suggesting that Mapplethorpe also has the earlier avant-garde in-your-face attitude)—has become a cultural cliché. That is, so-called radical chic: off-the-fashionable-avant-garde-rack rather than the sign of an unexpected original creation.
McCarthy’s shit is “an inflatable dog turd the size of a house,” and “came loose from its moorings. . . and knocked down a power line”—which is the most original thing about it—suggesting that “it might be properly renamed Shit Happens,"(11) implying that it is a “happening.” But it is hardly as new-sworthy as the original Happenings, which themselves weren’t original or new, for they were heavily indebted to Dada happenings, which were more impromptu vaudeville than programmed theater.
McCarthy and Serrano are avant-garde hacks, more particularly, all-American avant-garde hacks. Their shit looms with a delusional bigness emblematic of America’s delusion of grandeur and physical bigness.You should appreciate my linking it to a quote from ‘Bored of the Rings’. I believe I sent that ebook to you once.
I still have the original paperback from the 60s. Although I can’t see the connection, since the scene in Bored was entirely in context, and was a razz against JRR’s excessively detailed descriptions. This is just giant plastic doo-doo. No context, no justification. No dragons either.
Didn’t need it ... I’ve got the paperback from the 60s around here somewhere.
And I appreciate that you’re trying to make some kind of funny.
But poop? That’s “dragon” the bottom of the barrel, isn’t it? And don’t look at me with that Smaug expression either.
I recognized the quote immediately, as BotR is one of my favorite spoofs by the Harvard Lampoon guys!
They did a fine job on “Dune”, too!
Never read the ‘Dune’ spoof. Don’t suppose you have an ebook version you could send me?
Drew, I’d have to look too far down to be ‘dragon’ and looking ‘Smaug’.
Nope. I read it in paperback. It ought to be out there somewhere, though.
Amazon has the paperback for less than $3.
Once you read “Doon” ("The Dessert Planet” - which is a planet totally without entrees - only desserts and sweets) you will never be able to re-read Dune with a straight face again.
BTW: Henry N. Beard - one of the Harv. Lampoon guys who wrote BotR - wrote two other books that I know of.
“Latin For All Occasions”, and “More Latin For All Occasions”.
They are hilarious.
