#novysan

BIG WORD ALERT! Are you ready? It's called "Fetishization of Value." The equation looks like this Collectors /= Art Lovers. Any asshole willing to buy a a Koons/Hirst/Ryden/Insert Name of Next Banal Bad Boy Here for the price at which they sell could care less about what's actually on the canvas. Once a threshold of price has been reached these aesthetic midgets are paying for the NAME and jerking in a circle to see who's got the biggest wad and who can get it off fastest. The VALUE of the work is no longer the work itself, merely the name attached to it and how much it was bought for. It's become a fetish object, bragging rights, pissing contest, or the worst phrase possible, "part of an investment portfolio." No one's blaming the artist. Who doesn't want an artist to succeed and be able to make a living doing what the feel they need or want to do. Bill isn't dumping on Ryden, he's pointing out that those who buy that dreck aren't buying it because when they walked into the room and saw it their heart skipped a beat, or they swooned, or had to sit down, or obsessively thought about the piece day in and day out until they could seek it out again, as pieces I've seen have done to me. They bought it because someone else fetishized it, ripped the value from the work, and turned it into a commodity whose worth lies only in its provenance of owners who are so culturally retarded they've never picked up a brush or a chisel or a pipe wrench and propane valve. This fetishization of value and celebrity artist system centralizes and bleeds available cash from the market in general, leaving 99% of the artists to suffer in obscurity if they are unable or unwilling to participate in this pornography of price. Hyaena is probably one of the most important gallery spaces on the West Coast in it's form and function. You want something your pastor will think is nice and no one will ever question? Go to the mall and buy a Kinkade, Painter of Light™. You want something you can wave at the other investment bankers and dentists? Something with a whiff of danger like that Harley you keep in the garage? Sure, troll the Lowbrow/Pop Surrealist scene and pillage your artwork Viagra. Me, I want art that hurts, that bleeds, that sings. I want Hyaena.