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Within recorded history, the vocation of artist evolved from that of artisan and both vocations were bound to the built environment. Aesthetic considerations were a natural part of this environment that, in addition to addressing utilitarian needs, articulated the character of the artisan and his world. Although the term artist came to denote an artisan more involved with aesthetic considerations than with mechanical and structural problems, the two remained interrelated until the nineteenth century when applied science, engineering and manufacture disenfranchised the artisan culture. Manufacture made possible a system of standardization and mass replication. Shoes were no longer made for individual feet.

In architecture and the building trades, this new reality spawned reactions as diverse as the Arts And Crafts Movement of William Morris and the concept driven sterility of Le Corbusier’s structural dogmas. The German Bauhaus, while attempting to provide an aesthetic dimension to manufacture, did not spring from the artisan culture and was never supported by it. Rather, it appropriated terms and titles from that culture while rejecting the rigor that would have made them legitimate. The resultant alienation from traditional purpose gave rise to art for art’s sake. This posture drew from the supposed validities of confessional self-expression and conceptual jargon that, while mimicking technical language, eschewed rigor for fantasy. In consequence, the artifact underwent a process of degeneration leading toward self-indulgence and the insubstantiality of baseless concepts.

The drawing of a face is bounded by the subject matter and depth of expressive insight articulated by the artist’s skill. A crumpled piece of paper, on the other hand, proffers an almost limitless scale and variety of interpretations and conceptual validations. The Investment Banker who pays a half million dollars for a bowl of Belgian chocolates is buying neither the bowl nor chocolate. He is buying the concept imbedded in the certificate of authenticity signed by the artist that states that he, the collector, is now a protagonist in the creative act. He can arrange the chocolates, eat them, turn the bowl upside down, etc., etc. Contemporary Art’s abiding metaphor comes from Anderson’s story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In this perverse reality, the uninitiated rube sees only a bowl of chocolates and an imbecile willing to pay a half million dollars for an ego trip, not the rare power and sensitivity presumed by the gambit’s participants. The innocent perspective calls it what it is.

If anything can be a work of art if labeled thus by anyone, then anyone can be an artist and any activity can be an art. Thereby, these words have become meaningless, or at least synonymous with meaningless things and activities, as this is the only remaining standard by which one might define art without fear of contradiction. If, however, one concedes that art is the articulation of the artist’s character in his age, then contemporary attitudes and their articulation are far from meaningless. They are profoundly disturbing, as is the class of wealthy imbeciles who continue to enfranchise this development. Without the Medici, there would have been no Renaissance, and without hard-nosed, intelligent collectors, whose insight and honesty neuters the Sideshow Bobs of contemporary culture, the cynical novelty-show will continue.

Both current academic and critical practice treat works of art as subjects, not as embodiments of experience and perception, contemplation of which might allow one to look at life through the artist’s skill and quality of mind. The critic’s synthesis of abstractions is the precursor to Conceptualism in which domain the artifact ceases to matter beyond its role as armature upon which to hang or compose the complex of pseudo theories that become the actual work, and without which such artifacts would communicate very little. A urinal would be nothing more than a urinal, a can of soup would be nothing more than a can of soup, a bowl of chocolates, a bowl of chocolates, a messy bed, a messy bed, a shark in a tank of formaldehyde, a shark in formaldehyde, and so on without its explication, apology or manifesto. Conceptualism has emptied the artifact of meaning and allowed baseless theorizing and speculation, liberated from any reality or rigor, to usurp the role that art has played in civilization since its inception.

The Castellis and Gagosians, the Contemporary Art auctions at Christies and Southebys, the Saatchis and Cohens, Hirsts, Emins, Koons’s and their imitators and apologists, are irrelevant beyond the culture that is their collective accomplishment. Was Charles Saatchi so taken with Hirst’s A Thousand Years because a rotting cow’s head, alive with maggots and surrounded by dead and dying flies, mirrored his soul or his opinion of humanity, a contemporary manifestation of the story of the Golden Calf? Hirst’s title The Physical Impossibility of Death in The Mind of Someone Living is an observation so banal that it doesn’t warrant expression, and yet it and its object, a shark floating in formaldehyde, are considered by Saatchi, Cohen and their fellow travelers, who believe that culture is defined by money, to be brilliant and of great cultural significance. In a culture that values marketing and money above all other considerations, there may be something to this. However, it is a very small culture of egoists to whom Hirst, Emin, Koons, et al are selling, people interested in the power trip of defining stupid antics as high art, of demonstrating to one another that the power of money trumps all other considerations, that status, within their special environment, can completely eclipse stature.

There is a nasty game that I remember certain boys playing when I was growing up. They would all spit upon the pavement until there was a puddle, then drop a nickel into it. Whoever, among the smaller boys, wanted the nickel, had to stick his hand in the spit to retrieve it. A variance of this reminds me of the contemporary collector and museum curator. They collect spit to show they’ve got nickel.