my rant about bananas, art basel and contemporary art
It started not long ago when I chanced upon news from this years Art Basel Miami. The stories went viral and were widely shared.
Here are a few of the most relevant links (I will be quoting from them the most poignant excerpts):  Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin posing with Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian.” List price: $120,000. Perrotin Booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, booth D24
If you see a banana at the Perrotin art gallery, avoid all temptations to eat it*. The tropical fruit could very well cost you $120,000.
and further down: Cattelan’s banana offers insight into how we value objects. He originally sought to create a banana-shaped sculpture made of resin or bronze and then circled back to using a real banana. The work follows a hallowed tradition of avant-garde artists such as Piero Manzoni who sold “Bodies of Air (Corpi D’Aria)” in a series of inflated red, white or blue balloons. In 1961, Manzoni sold 90 small cans labeled “Artist’s Shit (Merda d’Artista) for roughly $30. In 2016, the Milan-based auction house Il Ponte Casa d’Aste reportedly sold one of the cans for nearly $300,000. ....................read more
* avoid all temptation to eat it: was this considered a challenge? Apparently so ......
The $120,000 banana at Art Basel Miami Beach was eaten by Datuna Saturday afternoon. A new banana was re-adhered to the wall with duct tape at the installation.
The $120,000 banana — a real, rather ripe and edible one — is the work of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and titled “Comedian.” The work comes with a Certificate of Authenticity, and owners are told that they can replace the banana, as needed.
Instructions on how to replace the banana are not included. ....... read more 
An art piece of a banana duct-taped to a wall, which captured a lot of buzz in the past week, has reportedly been taken down at the Art Basel show in Miami Beach.
"The crowds surrounding the installation posed a serious health and safety risk, as well as an access issue, so the work was removed," Art Basel said in a statement to The New York Times on Sunday. The controversy-stirring artwork first sold for $120,000, and then was sold two more times for $120,000 to $150,000, reported The Times. ............ read more
I could go on and on .... there is tons of it found on a Google Search: art basel miami banana duct tape
and I had tons of comments on my Facebook post(s) - but the best one was by my artist friend Ana Neamu who wrote:
every time i see something like this, I can't get out of my mind this movie:
....... which brings me to this:
not much has changed in all these years
.... when I wrote in the introduction to my blog December 17th 2013:
The times of manning the barricades have long since past for me. I no longer hold my breath waiting for change. Hoping, against all hope, perhaps, but I have no illusion that pissing against the wind will change the course of the Titanic.
Read more on my Blogger Blog LAOKOON, ANTI-LAOKOON and ANTI-KOONS which deals with a variety of related subjects, the part about Art Basel Miami just being a humorous closing observation.
On that Blogger Blog I had linked to an article in Vocativ about Art Basel 2013, and while there was still a remnant of the article on that link, I found that they changed their website format to strictly video reports, phasing out written stories. This is sad, going from cutting-edge reporting from the Deep Web to serving brain-pablum. Here is another look at the Vocativ story: Vocativ lays off entire editorial staff in shift to video.
Some articles like the one I linked to are still available, but only the text remained, the images are gone, and they are not indexed. You would find them only on old links via a search engine. I am not one to give up that easily, and I did find the original in the Internet Archives. So I downloaded the images from those archives and am posting them here (on the title image I added the lettering in Photoshop). I also added a image of Duchamp to illustrate the origin - the image links to the Wikipedia article. 
By Emily Levy Dec 06, 2013 at 8:57 AM ET MIAMI—It’s the first week of December, which means the world’s current and future gout sufferers have descended once again upon Miami for Art Basel, the jet set’s annual orgy of conspicuous consumption. Now in its 11th year, Basel Miami has become one of the largest and most important art fairs on the international circuit, where wealthy drunks drop obscene amounts of cash for the latest and greatest from hot young artists, and everyone else tries to fuck them. It’s widely known that wherever hot young artists go, perfume-scented clouds of bullshit form overhead, raining down free money and adoration. And the smog is thick at the Miami Beach Convention Center this year. A quick survey of the product on offer has convinced us once and for all that being a successful contemporary artist is the greatest job in the entire world. And here’s the exciting part: We’re pretty sure we’ve cracked the code. Own a trash can? Have a basement, garage or closet? Are you physically able to wrap pears in tinfoil or drop stuff on a floor? Well, you might as well buy a villa in France, friend, because you are a successful contemporary artist. That’s right: Now you, too, can earn $100,000 to $1 million at Art Basel without even leaving the house! It’s that easy. Wait a second, you’re asking, do I need to buy all kinds of fancy equipment or expensive professional art supplies? No and no! Just follow these 14 simple DIY steps using everyday household items and a little imagination. We’re not even going to make you buy the infomercial DVDs or pay shipping and handling, we’re just going to give away this life-changing information free of charge. 
If you’re also asking yourself, “Didn’t the original gangster Marcel Duchamp figure this shit out almost a hundred years ago with his famous found-object urinal?” The answer is yes, and congratulations for taking art history 101 in college. “But how is it then that an entire generation of RISD grads can keep ripping off the same idea year after year and still convince these corpulent billionaires to line up at the trough?” It’s art, you philistine; didn’t you go to college? Now let’s get down to business. All prices quoted below are real. 
1. Wad up a pile of your soiled underpants and drop them on the floor. Done. Congratulations! You are a fucking genius. Seriously. This piece sold for $3,500. We told you this would be easy! Now you can barely afford to keep your underwear on—it’s like printing money. (Rosa by Adriano Costa, Sadie Coles Gallery)
2. Splash some paint on a couple of used mattresses. Demand $65,000. EACH. You’re getting the hang of it. (Untitled by Wade Guyton, Kelley Walker, Greene Naftali Gallery)
3. Oops. You spilled some tennis balls on the floor. And…it’s a goddamned masterpiece! You’re a natural. We knew you had what it takes.
4. Blindfold yourself and grab 14 random items out of your attic or closet. Arrange them on the floor. Charge nothing less than the $12,000 you deserve, you beautiful monster. (Destination Peru by Meric Algun Ringborg, Galerie Nordenhake)
5. Wrap some fruit in tinfoil. Finished. Your raw talent is positively sexual. (The American Supermarket by Robert Watts, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects)
6. Place one fruit on a mirrored pedestal. Take the rest of the day off. (F.R.O #a-g by Thomas Zipp, Baudach)
7. Swipe some belts from your mom’s closet—the ones she got at Marshalls that time but never wore. Apply them to a wall. You must be exhausted. Stick with it, you can do this! (Beltbuckle (Voodoo Ray), Belt Buckle (Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag), Belt Buckle (Misirlou) by Jim Lambie, Anton Kern Gallery)
8. Put a rock in the corner. Make sure the rock is nice looking. This must have been what it was like watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. (Still. Life. by Ugo Rondinone, Esther Schipper Gallery)
9. Grab a big armload of shit out of a Goodwill donation dumpster and paper-mache it all together like a disturbed child. If you can’t find a pink sweatshirt, just toss in a dirty rag or whatever junk is closest, like a fast-food wrapper. But not your beret—you’re going to need that. You’re an artist now.
10. Dump the contents of your kitchen utility drawer into a concrete receptacle (Warning: advanced). (New Museum by Adriano Costa, Sadie Coles Gallery)
11. Steal any bike in Portland and/or outside someone’s tent at Burning Man. Ask $25,000 or best offer. (Pedal Over by Jarbas Lopes, Galerie Krinzinger).
12. Choose one sporting good from your garage and kick it into the middle of the room. Wait for your check in the mail. (Minus gallery fees, of course—the leeches always take a piece. They live off your creativity because they can’t create themselves. That’s just going to be life for you now, get used to it.) (Untitled (Ball) by Marzena Nowak, Gallery Mezanin)
13. Own a Shop-Vac and a can of spray-paint? Don’t overthink it. Quit while you’re ahead. You just earned $75,000—which is what this sold for on the first day. (Labor Saving Device by Roxie Paine, Kavi Gupta)
14. Dangle some life preservers on your step stool. Now take a load off and have a beer—you’ve really earned a break. But make sure to leave the red plastic cup on the stool—this is art, for fuck’s sake. Here’s $25,000. (Summer Law by Lizzie Fitch/ Ryan Trecartin, Andrea Rosen gallery)
Note:
I like to give credit to the author, and after some searching I found a profile for Emily Levy on LinkedIn that seems to be the right one, because of the dates she lists as working for Vocativ (2013 - 2014).
Are you with me so far? Kudos to you, your attention span is better than 99.5% of the Facebook click-happy crowd.
In conclusion I like to point out that not much has changed since 1975 when Tom Wolfe wrote THE PAINTED WORD 
QUOTE from the Introduction:
All these years I, like so many others, had stood in front of a thousand, two thousand, God-knows-how-many thousand Pollocks, de Koonings, Newmans, Nolands, Rothkos, Rauschenbergs, Judds, Johnses, Olitskis, Louises, Stills, Franz Klines, Frankenthalers, Kellys, and Frank Stellas, now squinting, now popping eye sockets open, now drawing back, now moving closer—waiting, waiting, forever waiting for . . . it . . . for it to come into focus, namely, the visual reward (for so much effort) which must be there, which everyone (tout le monde) knew to be there—waiting for something to radiate directly from the paintings on these invariably white walls, in this room, in this moment, onto my own optic chiasma. All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well—how very shortsighted! Now, at least, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not “seeing is believing,” you ninny, but “believing is seeing,” for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.
Basically he was saying that a group of critics (he called the kings of "Cultureburg" -Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg and Leo Steinberg ) had made it so that artworks mattered less than the texts that were produced surrounding them.
Quoting a book passage from Wikipedia "The Painted Word":
Conceptual Art: "…there, at last, it was! No more realism, no more representation objects, no more lines, colors, forms, and contours, no more pigments, no more brushstrokes. …Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until… it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture… and came out the other side as Art Theory!… Art Theory pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision… late twentieth-century Modern Art was about to fulfill its destiny, which was: to become nothing less than Literature pure and simple".
 Image from the LA Times
About Tom Wolfe - Los Angeles Times, May 15th 2018 Tom Wolfe, novelist and pioneer of New Journalism, dies at 88 Quote: Once asked why critics despised him, Wolfe said, “Intellectuals aren’t used to being written about. When they aren’t taken seriously and become part of the human comedy, they have a tendency to squeal like weenies over an open fire.” reviews of "the painted word"
I found this review rather interesting, a in-depth paper of which the author says:
"Caveat and disclaimer: this is an opinion piece, based on my own personal research." A Review of The Painted Word - 38 Years Late - by Miles Mathis
One other review (of many) I perused on Goodread that is remarkable is this one:
John Orman's Reviews > The Painted Word Since the Noordbrabants Museum exhibition opened on February 13th 2016, there has been an explosion of articles about Hieronymus Bosch. To list them all here would not serve much purpose, but I select those that have something new to offer in this category. A recent article from the BBC by Alastair Sooke on February 19th 2016 I found worth passing on here:  BBC - The ultimate vision of hell To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of the painter Hieronymus Bosch, the Noordbrabants Museum in his native city of Den Bosch in the Netherlands has organised an extensive exhibition of his work. It is a spectacular show, featuring 17 of his 24 surviving paintings, as well as six more pictures produced within his workshop. In addition, the exhibition, which has taken nine years to come to fruition, contains 19 of Bosch’s 20 extant drawings. .........................read MORE  One thing the brilliant Noordbrabants Museum exhibition does not examine, however, is Bosch’s influence upon subsequent Western art and culture. In his own day, Bosch, who married into wealth, was a successful and popular artist who moved within the upper echelons of society. He counted noblemen such as Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy, among his patrons, and inspired countless imitators during the 16th Century. Surprisingly, though, given his fame today, his idiosyncratic imagery fell out of favour in the decades following his death. Gradually Bosch’s art started to look old-fashioned. The only European country where he was not forgotten was Spain. In 1593, King Philip II transferred The Garden of Earthly Delights to the monastery, mausoleum and palace he had founded at San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
On the website of Open Culture
I was delighted to find this entry from February 8, 2016 Take a Virtual Tour of Hieronymus Bosch’s Bewildering Masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights because it complements perfectly the category of Hieronymus Bosch of this blog and adds additional insights into the extensive research already presented here. 
Art historians have argued about the meaning of The Garden of Earthly Delights--Hieronymus Bosch’s enormously sized, lavishly detailed, and compellingly grotesque late 14th- or early 15th-century triptych—more or less since the painter’s death. What does it really say about the appearance and fall of man on Earth that it seems to depict? How seriously or ironically does it say it? Does it offer us a warning against temptation, or a celebration of temptation? Does it take a religious or anti-religious stance? And what’s with all those creepy animals and bizarre pseudo-sex acts? “In spite of all the ingenious, erudite and in part extremely useful research devoted to the task,” said scholar Erwin Panofsky, “I cannot help feeling that the real secret of his magnificent nightmares and daydreams has still to be disclosed.”
....... read MORE
The Open Culture article also links to an incredible
“interactive documentary” of The Garden of Early Delights
the various parts of the painting are explained when you click the description icons as you zoom into the details.
Of course this here blog entry is the short version, and you should really visit the original source for more insights. Below, find this excellent trailer from Pieter van Huystee Film on Vimeo:
Check out the category
HIERONYMUS BOSCH for additional blogs and more excellent research on the subject. 
ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THIS ARTICLE:
The Phantasten Community mourns one of its greats. The Viennese painter and graphic artist Wolfgang Hutter (13 December 1928) passed away on September 26, 2014. Hutter was a founding member of the Art Club and one of the main representatives of the famous Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. His magical canvasses are worked out to the smallest detail and reveal his sensitive handwriting. Hutter's art encompasses also tapestries and mosaics such as the mosaic floor in the Theater an der Wien. For three decades, Wolfgang Hutter worked as a professor at the Vienna University of Applied Arts. In 1977 he received the Prize of the City of Vienna for Visual Arts, 2011 and he was honored with the Golden Medal for Service to the City of Vienna. Let's hope that the death of Wolfgang Hutter is no longer ignored in the public media. Such a large and internationally important Austrian artist and his family should in any case be granted the final tribute in the form of an honoring obituary. Many thanks to Gerhard Habarta without whom the sad news of the death of Wolfgang Hutter and this little obituary would not exist. The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism the discussions that followed after I posted this on my personal page were interesting - unfortunately, the embed above does not show these comments.
This is the link to the post - it should have all the comments on it: https://www.facebook.com/otto.rapp/posts/10151932433127470 'The time has come,' the walrus said, 'to talk of many things: of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings.' The times of manning the barricades have long since past for me. I no longer hold my breath waiting for change. Hoping, against all hope, perhaps, but I have no illusion that pissing against the wind will change the course of the Titanic. From time to time, articles such as "Successor states to an empire in free fall" appear that would promise a glimmer of hope: "I believe that something different really is happening in today's cultural jungle. Something is stirring that hasn't been seen for 30 years. New theories are emerging with strange and wonderful names that aim to describe in detail a culture and society they say are found on the far side of postmodernism." - Alan Kirby -but alas, the triumphant proclamation: Postmodernism is dead. Wail and rend your clothes. Postmodernism is dead. The tyrant is vanquished! was probably a little premature. Like I said, don't hold your breath! From time to time, I might indulge in the occasional rant, such as in my post About "Modern Art" and its excesses or I may also pass on some observations such as I'm sick of pretending: I don't get Art - but.... refer to my Titanic quote above. However, I cannot help throwing the occasional firecracker, little barbs that I am well aware of won't change the course of history one iota, but doing so is catharsis - it makes me feel better (hopefully, it makes you feel better also, that's the whole point). Jeff Koons could probably care less about what I write, nor would he even know who the hell I am or why he should even care. But I do want to say right here that I find him to be a very engaging and likable individual, and I enjoyed the way he talked about his art. Lets get to the point, after all this preliminary banter: LAOKOON, ANTI-LAOKOON and ANTI-KOONS  Nothing on the conceptual art scene today really surprises me: during my student days (77-82) I was involved with our student newspaper. I wrote critiques, also for our local newspaper and a few times for a national art magazine. Hence my signature "Self-portrait with the Critical Eye" from that period where I tried, tongue in cheek, to show the conflict between being an artist and a critic at the same time. When I say nothing surprises me: I contributed on several occasions conceptual ideas to our spin-off paper that came out irregularly during carnival and at April Fools Day. It was called "The McLiarist". A few of these conceptual head-slappers I now recognize in contemporary con-art - could it be that somehow they read yellowed copies of this rather obscure (fake) student paper from way back when? Or was I simply clairvoyant?  Laocoön and His Sons So now, in the same spirit I hereby conceptualize the following (no need to actually make the object): As in the sixties the Vienna School had reacted to Lessing's Laokoon and particularly Ernst Fuchs had created his monumental work "The Anti-Laokoon" (from his period 1960 to 1970); the first artwork that Jeff Koons sold to a collector (for $ 3.000.-) was a basketball in a fish tank.  Ernst Fuchs, The Anti-Laokoon, 1965  I therefore propose the "Anti-Koons" being imaginary basketballs turned inside-out and filling the space of an otherwise empty gallery.  Open Cube Group Show at White Cube Mason's Yard But unlike the space above, which is derived (or better said: "derivative") of Brian O'Doherty's "Inside the White Cube", this gallery space is not empty, but filled to the brim with imaginary inverted basket balls. Now if I could just get an interested collector to buy this for hmmmm, |
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