Though I can appreciate and even like some aspects of the Bishop and Welch sort of paintings, all that you show here is the current mode of Pop Art galleries in Midtown Manhattan that basically take the Warhol -> Banksy image as replication of itself tract and add street fashion branding. I would imagine the distinction between the Omaha show and the Manhattan commercial galleries are scale and price. Those pieces in Midtown are fuckong gigantic, and it's hard to imagine them used for much other than a hip-hop music video (not necessarily derogatory) or Knicks player's living room (derogatory).
But they're there because they sell, I guess.
Hate us a strong word but I actively dislike the plastic figurine stuff you showed last. I saw that exact same type of stuff by those exact makers in a modern art museum in Amsterdam that was way overpriced — like 40 euro to get in and get right across the street was the Van Gogh and National galleries that were three times as large, much more full of art, and the set was simply better. Hate us a strong word but I don't "get" anything from the art other than, "Yeah cool." The figures have attitude, I guess, but having visited goth galleries with doom cookie and spoopy figurines over the years, at least I get the attitude from those. This is more like basic bitch? I dunno. Normies who decided they're "edgy." I don't even think the gloomcookie stuff is good, I just get it.
My wife sometimes is exasperated at my openness and willingness to call art art even when it's not good or super commercial or lazy or sloppy or whatever, so she might not consider this stuff art at all. I do but it's empty art, for sure. Containers, art-shaped pieces for the continuation of the modern art market and it's infrastructure. Can't blame those design studio type people from extruding goofy non-articulating toys for rich people, it's a living.
I'd say that you're probably right in diagnosing all of this stuff as more basic than anything; MAM often gives me the feeling that it is performing the act of being a gallery and showing contemporary art than it is actually doing it. This is Omaha, after all. But I have an interest in talking about the Omaha scene.
Is it good? No. But is it worth thinking about? Yes. Because it's happening.
I Would say fundamentally even since antiquity there has been the option in the arts for the “strange” or “uncanny” or “weird” or just “notable “ over the beautiful, because the highest artistic beautiful is almost always a combination of the uncanny-uncommon and the beautiful, so having one part of the combination was always a way to, hopefully, accumulate enough to generate a thing akin to beauty.
Obviously the analysis that the primary drive of this stuff is “coolness” is correct. I think trying to find a meaning, even if the authors intended it, is actually against the fundamental drives which make people make this stuff; it’s gold because gold is pretty against the black and red contrast, it’s little people drawing a painting because “oh that’s clever and cute” it’s strange hyper pop consumer statues because this is for a land of people obsessed with psycho bunny and Kanye west album covers;
The question of the cool in contemporary aesthetics is a question of a globalized voltron concept which has gradually formulated by absorbing signifiers from each nation and group that has added to the cosmopolitan texture;
You have everything from yes antiquity up to Nietzsche up to James dean on the European elements of it, but then you have the infusion of the Asian “iki” which has been absorbed from mostly anime into western culture, which does allow the cute and play-monstrous to be considered cool, then obviously there is the actual African and African American hiphop variants. This Voltron of cool gets to people because it regardless of any meaning signifies “chic” “vital” “low but artistically rich “
While obviously these people could all conjure up meanings and purposes and points, catching eyes and making dollars and trying to be cool, is just the bedrock of what’s going on; and I think they can only understand how to do these contextualized to the fandom-way of consumption.
And obviously there's no skill in making these sorts of things; but (1) that's what happens when machines, not people, are sculpting them; we would be appreciative of the skill of KAWS if he were carving this skullhead-thing out of marble but not when he pours plastic into a mold. (2) set aside the skill question and there's nothing different between this stuff and, say, Cellini's Perseus (the antiquities fandom) or Degas' dancers (the ballet fandom); those sculptures aren't doing anything either, they're just existing in the world. In other words, you are fully and entirely correct to approach all of this stuff as fandom art.
But there as a huge apparatus, an entire edifice of thinking, which denigrates fan art. That's a problem for criticism because it says certain things are not worth thinking about. Yet I'm much, much more interested in what people do with an artwork or an object once it's made than I am in why the artist made it.
Some of his stuff is bronze or painted with an exquisite hand. They had a little doc about his process at the SFMOMA show. But I still think it's boring and desperate.
The unity of opposites here is non western cultures, specifically India and china. They ARE making sculptures and paintings and so forth of their traditional motifs, myths, and in line with older sculptures and architecture and the whole, but they WILL use machines and molds and so forth, even AI, because the Asian doesn’t consume these things in a weird high-class vs low signifier way, they just LIKE them, so getting their fix through a machine cut mass produced variant is All and good. But I agree, when you would have seen a play based on the character Mignon from Goethe, such is fanfiction, when you look at Gustav Moreau’s Jupiter or his Salome, this is no different from fanfiction works of the same type.
I think the high low divide that says things are worthy or not worthy as fixation points is worked around by the fact that people are still producing so much art and fan arts, if one look towards instagram or Pinterest we find an endless array of very good painters, draughtsman and so forth making art based on anime and cartoons and video games, they keep on making it and people keep paying for it and consuming it.
What happens when those people get a bit older and make more money? It certainly won’t stop, I think the critics will just be forced to grow more accepting of the new pop art.
In Amadeus there's a scene where Mozart is trying to convince the Emperor and his cabinet that Mozart's making of an opera based on Figaro would be a good thing. He says some thing like "why should we always have to be looking to these old gods and heroes for our inspiration?" and one of the councilors says "because they go on and on, and represent the eternal in us."
But the eternal could be represented in fan art as well. A painting of some event from Greek or Roman mythology representing a virtue like loyalty or fortitude or whatever could be easily switched out for a fan art of sonic or pinky pie or . . . you get the idea. It's the virtues these characters represent that are eternal, not the characters themselves.
I think even this is a bit of a lie on their part, they add eternities and might to the idea of the ancients and their myths, but this in itself is an aesthetical routine and not something so deeply ingrained in the works.
I think what we do need is the acceptance of trope characters and Carry alongs, the build up of certain symbols or characters in a public imagination is such a mighty thing, and we see it in Asia with trope-y characters, but I think the acceptance of this needs to heighten in the west.
Every story a trope character is used in, becomes a datapoint considered when you consume the character next. This aggregates care and love of the character. This is why the ancient figures have such power.
There was a KAWS show at SFMOMA recently (maybe it's still there?) and there were a couple pieces I found kinda interesting but otherwise I don't get it. I'm a bit dismissive of work that seems born to be attached to a backpack, I guess.
Did you see The Atlantic's recent article about Duchamp? I'd be curious on your take.
A pretty good retrospective of his career, although the author gets it wrong when he attributes Duchamp’s doings to some sort of WW1-induced angst; the Armory show, and Nude Descending a Staircase, date from 1913. It’s a common mistake—for some reason there are a huge number of people invested in this “trauma” reading of modern art who seem unwilling to admit that many of the artists of the time were simply thinking really hard about machines (the Atlantic article mentions that in the beginning).
Yeah.
Though I can appreciate and even like some aspects of the Bishop and Welch sort of paintings, all that you show here is the current mode of Pop Art galleries in Midtown Manhattan that basically take the Warhol -> Banksy image as replication of itself tract and add street fashion branding. I would imagine the distinction between the Omaha show and the Manhattan commercial galleries are scale and price. Those pieces in Midtown are fuckong gigantic, and it's hard to imagine them used for much other than a hip-hop music video (not necessarily derogatory) or Knicks player's living room (derogatory).
But they're there because they sell, I guess.
Hate us a strong word but I actively dislike the plastic figurine stuff you showed last. I saw that exact same type of stuff by those exact makers in a modern art museum in Amsterdam that was way overpriced — like 40 euro to get in and get right across the street was the Van Gogh and National galleries that were three times as large, much more full of art, and the set was simply better. Hate us a strong word but I don't "get" anything from the art other than, "Yeah cool." The figures have attitude, I guess, but having visited goth galleries with doom cookie and spoopy figurines over the years, at least I get the attitude from those. This is more like basic bitch? I dunno. Normies who decided they're "edgy." I don't even think the gloomcookie stuff is good, I just get it.
My wife sometimes is exasperated at my openness and willingness to call art art even when it's not good or super commercial or lazy or sloppy or whatever, so she might not consider this stuff art at all. I do but it's empty art, for sure. Containers, art-shaped pieces for the continuation of the modern art market and it's infrastructure. Can't blame those design studio type people from extruding goofy non-articulating toys for rich people, it's a living.
I'd say that you're probably right in diagnosing all of this stuff as more basic than anything; MAM often gives me the feeling that it is performing the act of being a gallery and showing contemporary art than it is actually doing it. This is Omaha, after all. But I have an interest in talking about the Omaha scene.
Is it good? No. But is it worth thinking about? Yes. Because it's happening.
Fwiw, I love your Omaha-art pieces, whether the work is local or imported..
I Would say fundamentally even since antiquity there has been the option in the arts for the “strange” or “uncanny” or “weird” or just “notable “ over the beautiful, because the highest artistic beautiful is almost always a combination of the uncanny-uncommon and the beautiful, so having one part of the combination was always a way to, hopefully, accumulate enough to generate a thing akin to beauty.
Obviously the analysis that the primary drive of this stuff is “coolness” is correct. I think trying to find a meaning, even if the authors intended it, is actually against the fundamental drives which make people make this stuff; it’s gold because gold is pretty against the black and red contrast, it’s little people drawing a painting because “oh that’s clever and cute” it’s strange hyper pop consumer statues because this is for a land of people obsessed with psycho bunny and Kanye west album covers;
The question of the cool in contemporary aesthetics is a question of a globalized voltron concept which has gradually formulated by absorbing signifiers from each nation and group that has added to the cosmopolitan texture;
You have everything from yes antiquity up to Nietzsche up to James dean on the European elements of it, but then you have the infusion of the Asian “iki” which has been absorbed from mostly anime into western culture, which does allow the cute and play-monstrous to be considered cool, then obviously there is the actual African and African American hiphop variants. This Voltron of cool gets to people because it regardless of any meaning signifies “chic” “vital” “low but artistically rich “
While obviously these people could all conjure up meanings and purposes and points, catching eyes and making dollars and trying to be cool, is just the bedrock of what’s going on; and I think they can only understand how to do these contextualized to the fandom-way of consumption.
And obviously there's no skill in making these sorts of things; but (1) that's what happens when machines, not people, are sculpting them; we would be appreciative of the skill of KAWS if he were carving this skullhead-thing out of marble but not when he pours plastic into a mold. (2) set aside the skill question and there's nothing different between this stuff and, say, Cellini's Perseus (the antiquities fandom) or Degas' dancers (the ballet fandom); those sculptures aren't doing anything either, they're just existing in the world. In other words, you are fully and entirely correct to approach all of this stuff as fandom art.
But there as a huge apparatus, an entire edifice of thinking, which denigrates fan art. That's a problem for criticism because it says certain things are not worth thinking about. Yet I'm much, much more interested in what people do with an artwork or an object once it's made than I am in why the artist made it.
Some of his stuff is bronze or painted with an exquisite hand. They had a little doc about his process at the SFMOMA show. But I still think it's boring and desperate.
The unity of opposites here is non western cultures, specifically India and china. They ARE making sculptures and paintings and so forth of their traditional motifs, myths, and in line with older sculptures and architecture and the whole, but they WILL use machines and molds and so forth, even AI, because the Asian doesn’t consume these things in a weird high-class vs low signifier way, they just LIKE them, so getting their fix through a machine cut mass produced variant is All and good. But I agree, when you would have seen a play based on the character Mignon from Goethe, such is fanfiction, when you look at Gustav Moreau’s Jupiter or his Salome, this is no different from fanfiction works of the same type.
I think the high low divide that says things are worthy or not worthy as fixation points is worked around by the fact that people are still producing so much art and fan arts, if one look towards instagram or Pinterest we find an endless array of very good painters, draughtsman and so forth making art based on anime and cartoons and video games, they keep on making it and people keep paying for it and consuming it.
What happens when those people get a bit older and make more money? It certainly won’t stop, I think the critics will just be forced to grow more accepting of the new pop art.
In Amadeus there's a scene where Mozart is trying to convince the Emperor and his cabinet that Mozart's making of an opera based on Figaro would be a good thing. He says some thing like "why should we always have to be looking to these old gods and heroes for our inspiration?" and one of the councilors says "because they go on and on, and represent the eternal in us."
But the eternal could be represented in fan art as well. A painting of some event from Greek or Roman mythology representing a virtue like loyalty or fortitude or whatever could be easily switched out for a fan art of sonic or pinky pie or . . . you get the idea. It's the virtues these characters represent that are eternal, not the characters themselves.
I think even this is a bit of a lie on their part, they add eternities and might to the idea of the ancients and their myths, but this in itself is an aesthetical routine and not something so deeply ingrained in the works.
I think what we do need is the acceptance of trope characters and Carry alongs, the build up of certain symbols or characters in a public imagination is such a mighty thing, and we see it in Asia with trope-y characters, but I think the acceptance of this needs to heighten in the west.
Every story a trope character is used in, becomes a datapoint considered when you consume the character next. This aggregates care and love of the character. This is why the ancient figures have such power.
There was a KAWS show at SFMOMA recently (maybe it's still there?) and there were a couple pieces I found kinda interesting but otherwise I don't get it. I'm a bit dismissive of work that seems born to be attached to a backpack, I guess.
Did you see The Atlantic's recent article about Duchamp? I'd be curious on your take.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/marcel-duchamp-legacy-moma-retrospective/687614/?gift=7Dmgya6WfQQSjX_hzD7e6M-SZZO-HykJN_D8DmxbLaA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
A pretty good retrospective of his career, although the author gets it wrong when he attributes Duchamp’s doings to some sort of WW1-induced angst; the Armory show, and Nude Descending a Staircase, date from 1913. It’s a common mistake—for some reason there are a huge number of people invested in this “trauma” reading of modern art who seem unwilling to admit that many of the artists of the time were simply thinking really hard about machines (the Atlantic article mentions that in the beginning).
I think we tend to think that history can be reduced to the things we still remember a hundred years later....