This week in Art Theory

As always, The Onion is funny because it's true.

The Onion: Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not

The fact that the web page continually reverts to a "normal"
state, observers say, is either evidence that ongoing vandalization is being
deleted through vigilant updating, or a deliberate statement on the impermanence
of superficial petit-bourgeois culture in the age of modernity.

The Onion is pretty much a liberal arts graduate's best hope for gainful employment where they can actually use what they learned in school, isn't it?

I wonder what The Epicurean Dealmaker would surmise from this?

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Art, money, class, and the lack thereof

As a sensitive aesthete, I greatly enjoyed The Epicurean Dealmaker's latest foray into meta-sarcasm, this time directed towards the obsession that the nouveau -riches have with preposterously expensive art.

The Epicurean Dealmaker: L.H.O.O.Q.
Now the cynics among you (surely not among my readers?) might sigh and shift impatiently in your seats, expecting some hackneyed jeremiad about conspicuous consumption, invidious consumption, and fine art as a Veblen good. But no, my hackneyed jeremiad will address one or two far more interesting subtleties which I perceive (or am willing to invent) as characterizing the current phenomenon of hedge fund barons spending their ill-gotten gains on art.

I give TED top marks for both using the phrase "Veblen good" and for refraining from referring to the Feast of Trimalchio from Petronius' Satyricon, which was the most obvious, and sophomoric, parallel to draw. TED of course is beyond such pseudo-learned posturing, unlike myself.

I did have to deduct a mark for his failure to bridge the title of his essay back to whether or not Ken Griffin or Stevie Cohn have a nice butt. It might not be central to TED's thesis, but it would have been a nice bonus.

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