TLDNU*

(*Too long, did not understand.)

Either I just succumbed to some kind of reading disorder, or the reliably daft e-artnow list has delivered another payload of grade-A twaddle. I’ll make some allowances for Bildfrost (“Frozenness”) being an exhibition at a German gallery, but on the other hand although I’m pretty confident that I speak German I’d still want to run my German press release past somebody who was a native speaker to make sure I wasn’t making ein Arsch of myself.

I’ll just pull out the silliest phrases and paragraphs at random from what is quite a lengthy screed, but trust me: it all makes about as much sense out of context as it does in context, i.e. virtually none. There’s also a lot of telling us what we’d be able to see with our eyes if we could see the art, which is redundant, patronising and controlling if we intend to see the art and usually baffling if we can’t see the art and probably never will.

BILDFROST (“Frozenness”)

“Initially, the picture seals itself off from the interpretation of any impression. An oscillating flurry emits from the center that steers the anticipation of a disappearing space into darkness. At the same time, it becomes clear that the fabric of colors is the result of picturesque grid structures. Has large pixilated photography been translated into painting or is the painting imitating a print? The understanding of the romantic image remains a wanting. The work resists any outsider’s demand to understand and requires an active positioning of the viewer. A motive between figurative speech and reflections on media.”

THE ORA… THE ORA…

Ten international galleries want you, like a vampire bat wants sleeping cattle. Premio Ora (“Premium Hours”) says that the “basic registration fee required as partial coverage for organizational expenses” is €60 to enter three art works for consideration. Poor things, only covering their organisational expenses partially. Each additional image after the first three is only €5 and luckily for them you, it’s possible to enter an unlimited number of works.

Yes, it’s another sketchy “opportunity” for artists to enter a competition where they pay for the remote opportunity of possibly getting an unpaid gallery show, i.e. something that an artist should usually be paid for, or at the very least should not have to pay for in order to be considered. I’m providing links here for the purpose of verification; I wouldn’t suggest visiting any of them unless you want to know which international galleries are involved in this farrago and I would therefore recommend in the strongest possible terms that you don’t ever have any dealings with whatsoever.

A bona fide artist who is having an exhibition at an art gallery is not a “winner” and does not pay all the costs of transporting and exhibiting their work. Any artist who does so is a customer, and they should have their service– i.e. in this case their work shown in the gallery for two weeks– provided to them without quibbles and without all this pretence of meritocratic selection or curatorial oversight.

I DOUBT SHE CAN EVEN SPELL “PHILANTHROPY”

DERP. This is the closest Anita can get to the human expression known as “smile” when she’s wearing her rigid Anita flesh mask.

Hello darlings, mwah mwah mwah, thank you so much for coming– I thought you were still in Dubai for the arms fair! Art collector and spender of her husband’s dirty money Anita Zabludowicz (see Apotheosis of the idiot) has excelled herself recently with her Art Diary [sic] about a trip to India. Never has an art diary had so little to do with either art or diaries. Or a basic level of literacy, empathy and emotional fluency. Apparently it makes her sad that the poor people in India don’t smile. Cheer up, bastards. She needn’t get on her high horse, anyway. I’ve never seen a photo of her– and she has herself photographed constantly– where her face even seemed physiologically capable of smiling. She also says:

“The locals could not do enough for us, they only wanted to please us and this was their reward, I wish us Brits were more like that.”

Lovely little brown people, adorable! A bit dirty, though. I think you’ll find that they’d prefer their reward to be money and not having to live in servile destitution and desperate squalor, Anita. I’m pretty sure Gandhi is still available on DVD; I suggest you watch it. On behalf of every man, woman and child in all the nations of the United Kingdom, I also apologise wholeheartedly for us not being subservient or powerless enough for you, Big Z. Don’t worry, though, your husband’s cowering accomplices in the Conservative Party are making some progress towards rolling back all our hard-won freedoms and accomplishments. It’ll be just like India, not even India now but India a century ago! “I say, Lady Zabludowicz, frightful bad luck… was aiming for the tiger and one of your bally rickshaw-wallahs got in the way. Blasted his head right orff. Send my condolences to the widow, and so forth. Now, where’s that blasted tea?”

SHOW ( ME THE MONEY ) ARTISTS

The filename of this image is “coolsm”, which I presume refers to the copy… but S&M is also cool. In this narrative I think the artists who submit work are the masochists which must make Show Artists the doms. THEY WANT TO SEE “IT” AND THEY’LL SHOW YOU, OH YES. The safe phrase is “get lost”.

Hello everybody, my name is DJ Artistair and when I’m not DJing at the coolest Chilean clubs (I specialise in Monkstep, but you won’t have heard of it yet because I’m cooler than you), or testing out new men’s hair products, or having laser eye surgery or posing for generic stock photography, I Exhibit & Sell [sic] my art, which consists of TV test cards and small obsolete racing cars. Because “cards” and “cars” sound almost the same, so my work is interrogating the po(li/e)tics of homonymy.

Not really. Actually I’m much more handsome than this and I haven’t worn a waistcoat since before the Second World War. What really happened is that Show Artists took it upon themselves to spam me with their spamming stick, so I thought I’d give them some of the publicity they crave. I think the appropriate cliché is “be careful what you wish for.” Sorry guys, I may have suffered every indignity as an artist except popularity but I’m not a moron and unfortunately for you I have considerably more sense than money. Not the first one of these I’ve been subjected to, but it’s as stupid as any of them.

THE VINYL MUSE™

“Inspired by Van Gogh”. Signing myself into a mental institution now to escape from this horrible world. Bye.

In case there remained some doubt that any artist’s work can be recuperated and assimilated by the masters of capitalism, I present the Barbie Collector Museum Edition which has found a whole new way to exploit dead artists. Living artists: all you have to do is die and stay that way for a few centuries while your work accumulates value and is at length immortalised (and presumably– cheekily– trademarked) by Mattel, Inc.

“Leonardo da Vinci Barbie doll evokes the mysterious Mona Lisa with her enigmatic expression, long flowing hair, and brocade gown featuring a laced satin bodice with beautifully detailed sleeves.” “Gustav Klimt Barbie doll echoes the artist’s portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, reflecting the painting’s Byzantine mosaics and Egyptian motifs.”

Most horrifying of all, there’s the “Barbie doll inspired by Vincent Van Gogh” which “captures the mood of the magnificent masterpiece, ‘The Starry Night.’ She wears a strapless cocktail dress with a Cypress tree accent in black flock fabric, and the swirling patterns of the painting are echoed in her circular earrings, molded metallic sandals, and wavy hair.”

With either a total lack of irony or balls the size of an elephant’s, Mattel have appropriated the (at one time reviled and virtually worthless) work of an anguished mentally ill man who is equally famous for [a] barely selling any work while he was alive and [b] cutting off part of his own ear after an altercation with a prostitute. And they’ve appropriated it in the anachronistic and yet strangely appropriate form of a doll who looks like a Marcel-waved Manhattan Party Girl from the 1950s, i.e. a high class prostitute.

I’m sure the bloody and disconcerting Marina Abramovic Barbie is already in the pipeline, but what about a Cindy Sherman Barbie? Or a Hans Bellmer Barbie? Chapman Brothers Barbie-Ken? Matthew Barney Barbie caked in Vaseline? Frida Kahlo Barbie Bus Stop Play Set? Where are Drinking Himself to Death with An Income From His Rich Parents Ken? Sentimental Misogynist Pre Raphaelite Ken? Francis Bacon Ken with matching Rough Trade Ken?