I strongly agree with many of the perceptions towards both the global art market and the political economy discussed in Julia Bryan-Wilson’s article entitled Sounding the Fury on Kirsten Forkert and Carl Andre at Artforum. Just as many (those in the art scene during the 60’s and 70’s) saw the present situation as corrupted by corporation, big money markets, and lack of artists’ rights, its despairing to realize that this gusto has been lost with the times, and the mass demonstrations of the past are no more than nostalgic to the present. Unfortunately I believe things on the global scale have only gotten worse, and are, and will forever continue to do the same. As long as theirs money in the scheme of things, we will continue to have the same, larger than life (the same goes for their price tags), artists, pumping out the same commercial driven, non revolutionary artwork. This same attitude exists within the world political system today. No longer do we have the hundred thousand people marches onto the capital to protest what they know is wrong (the Vietnam War), yet when rampant politicians wage another illegal war across the world in the present, citizens are content to sit back and let the media deal with it. I find it both extremely compelling that these two artists are taking things into their own hands, in a matter of speaking, by revisiting these great moments of “the people”, and attempting to rekindle the same strength within today’s populations. Overall, its depressing to come to grips with the “decreasing primacy of massed bodies in public global protest, (Wilson, 97), but hopeful in the sense that maybe, just maybe, the masses can re-unite, and re-kindle their political prowess.
Gordon Nicholas
More on Julia Bryan-Wilson analysis
Download > Art Versus Work
by Julia Bryan-Wilson
(read by Joseph del Pesco)