Simulacra
What is made is not so very special. Most of what has been made and still carries meaning is moribund. It is not only “shit” that “happens”, what also “happens” is accidental architecture, accidental portraiture, accidental caricature and accidental “decoupage”.
In Paris, contemporary with the Lettristes, a group of artists began to embrace and celebrate the ragged art created by the act of tearing multiple layers of posters from their billboards, walls, pissoirs and lampposts. There was no ‘one artist’, but an effect created by no one.
Such is the event of simulacra. It is the joke of neutrons on the art market. To that human ‘genius’ that can be priced so accurately, exchanged so coherently, it poses the genius of place, the good taste of clouds, the super-slow-mo of erosive, windy sculptors – their original works are unsellable, unmarketable. They can only be sold as reproductions.
The beauty of walking as art is that the original can never be for sale. Hence the warm heart with which the walker greets the blessing of a simulacra on her path.
In Paris, contemporary with the Lettristes, a group of artists began to embrace and celebrate the ragged art created by the act of tearing multiple layers of posters from their billboards, walls, pissoirs and lampposts. There was no ‘one artist’, but an effect created by no one.
Such is the event of simulacra. It is the joke of neutrons on the art market. To that human ‘genius’ that can be priced so accurately, exchanged so coherently, it poses the genius of place, the good taste of clouds, the super-slow-mo of erosive, windy sculptors – their original works are unsellable, unmarketable. They can only be sold as reproductions.
The beauty of walking as art is that the original can never be for sale. Hence the warm heart with which the walker greets the blessing of a simulacra on her path.