Friday, April 22, 2011

The Perils of Crowdsourced Art Criticism

Blasphemous or misunderstood? Headless Jesus statue at Meijer Gardens sparks boycott effort

I began to argue that this thread demonstrated the need for arts education, but then realized it demonstrated the need for jes' plain ol' education.


Meijer Gardens, incidentally, is privately funded by grants, foundations, and individual and corporate gifts. It's not clear if Barking Bear doesn't consider Jim Dine's work to be art, or doesn't consider contemporary art to be true art, or if he actually denies the existence of "art" as a viable concept.


Other commenters made lame cracks about headless statues of Muhammad, but greco7 went the extra mile. Not many people these days are willing to go on record with anti-Catholic bile. I particularly like his use of scare quotes.

In related news, Gary Wohlscheid's website is like a Wayback Machine to 1998. Garish colors, liberal use of animated gifs, garbled display in browsers that are not Netscape 4. I'm particularly taken by Aborted Fetal Cells for Food Flavor Enhancement. Perhaps Wohlscheid should have checked the dateline before reprinting the story.

[Updated to allow Barking Bear to double down. 



I'm taken by the blithe assumption that there is no private market for art. Also, where is all of this government money, and how do I get some? I'm an artist too, dammit.]

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