Have you seen the new Dodge D'art?

In accordance with this blog’s fundamental policy established for the objective and informative presentation of things, stuff, and odd bits, all commentary lacks thorough anything.

This is an art and language post sourced from the Guardian. If you’re not bored already, go find a mirror.

I read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english

You don’t have to.

But read this bit:     

The Simon Lee Gallery in Mayfair is currently showing work by the veteran American artist Sherrie Levine. A dozen small pink skulls in glass cases face the door. A dozen small bronze mirrors, blandly framed but precisely arranged, wink from the walls. In the deep, quiet space of the London gallery, shut away from Mayfair's millionaire traffic jams, all is minimal, tasteful and oddly calming. 

Until you read the exhibition hand-out. "The artist brings the viewer face to face with their own preconceived hierarchy of cultural values and assumptions of artistic worth," it says. "Each mirror imaginatively propels its viewer forward into the seemingly infinite progression of possible reproductions that the artist's practice engenders, whilst simultaneously pulling them backwards in a quest for the 'original' source or referent that underlines Levine's oeuvre."

--Andy Beckett, The Guardian

It goes on to talk about the legitimization of International Art English (IAE), which is not unlike modern English, in the sense that you can read it sometimes. Otherwise it is largely impenetrable jargon. It’s spoken by the elite and if you ever want to break into the scene, be prepared to gush it yourself.

Although I relish in visiting museums and galleries, I rarely talk much, even if I’m going along with someone. What’s that bit about better to remain quiet and thought a fool? If you’re anywhere between 16 and 60, and non-historitative verbal critique is only as good as it’s convolution. I just don’t feel like making the effort. I’m getting married in April… so it’s getting to the point where I don’t care to wear clean clothes unless I’m with the rasion d’etre, let alone impress young birds from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

But the article touches on IAE’s influence as a language… as a medium for thought, for artists. So now, after complicating the language of art, the artists own motivations to push the limit of complication follows. In this age of blah, blah, blah, overwhelming sensory inputs, blah, blah, the speed of information, modernization, it’s just utterly exhausting that there must be so much more added complexity to something as profoundly simple as art: something that should speaks for itself.

Figure 1. The transversal of the natural real and the perceived normality of the soul in the void, as the rapturous transmigration of the physical entity overcomes the maw of stereotyped rebirth imagery. Image most likely subject to copyright.