Quoted in "The Next Big Thing in Pop Culture: Public Bathrooms/In fashion, film and beyond, restrooms have become sites of creative inspiration" (NYT).
The NYT instructs us to think of a public bathrooms as "an apt setting for art exploring identity, the body and discretion"... which is so not what I'm looking for in a public bathroom. Ah, but I'm talking about basic human needs, not art. Art is supposed to challenge you and to upset you, if you are bourgeois.
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40 comments:
Pubic toilets are the appropriate venue for gender fluids
I would forgo art in public restroom. The materials for critical commentary are too readily at hand.
Artists these days are all frauds.
This is when we need Titus. And Laslo. CC, JSM
Pipe down junkies...you'll still be able to shoot up there. If asked just say you're 'performance art' and the bourgeois won't challenge you.
Is there anything, and I mean anything more worn out than dressing in drag? It was already worn out 50 years ago, if not longer. I don't even get the point anymore. It's not shocking. It's not attractive or artistic. It's usually gaudy and clownish. The message, if there is one, is lost and now more a message of perversion than it ever was in the past.
It's a form of expression for the narcissistic person devoid of originality, talent and taste. It's the "That's what she said." of fashion.
"The NYT instructs us to think of a public bathrooms as "an apt setting for art exploring identity, the body and discretion"
Isn't this completely appropriate? The public restroom is exactly where a big pile of shit belongs.
Nice one, Howard! 10/10.
"The public restroom is exactly where a big pile of shit belongs."
Plinth of shit please. It's art!
Gotta admit, I've seen a LOT of creativity in public restrooms. Is art? I am not qualified to judge.
So much pop art and related is really about challenging the bourgeois assumptions of early 20th century Victorian culture.
Now it's just mind numbing and boring intended for people who have dulled their senses through persistent banality. All while being cheered by the similarly numbed.
Kandinsky's bottom of the pyramid who think attention is equivalent to thought-provoking.
Water Closets are where bits are bleached
Derelicte!
That was one of your better efforts Howard. Or at least I enjoyed it.
The daily sporadic need to eliminate liquid and solid digestive waste products is a constant reminder that we are smelly animals, albeit smelly animals with interesting brains. Our instinctive shame creates a need for privacy and, naturally, the world of art wishes to skewer the bourgeoisie by inverting our basic need. How do people actually make money doing things like this?
Ally McBeal made 5 seasons starting in 1997. Sit down with your “next big thing”.
The logical next step for genderfluid.
Such a venue is, dare I say, the perfect gallery for Hunter's art. Think of it like an autostereogram...you won't be able to actually tell which pieces are his unless you relax your pupils.
"exploring identity, the body and discretion"...
I read this as "exploring identity, the body and excretion"...
Which makes more sense.
Just a short drive from Madison, at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, you can find bathroom art. https://www.jmkac.org/washrooms/
"Art is supposed to challenge you and to upset you, if you are bourgeois."
Indeed, that is the credo many artists live by, not realizing that the bourgeoisie has moved on to the realm of not caring.
“A public toilet neutralizes and suspends the dualism between … what remains private and what is meant to be shared."
In other words: If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down?
Quoted in "The Next Big Thing in Pop Culture: Public Bathrooms/In fashion, film and beyond, restrooms have become sites of creative inspiration" (NYT).
Is there going to be a place of relative privacy where my daughters can use the restrooms?
Are we going to address the primary functions of restrooms which are to improve public health and reduce the spread of certain diseases?
Do we get to have basic institutions that serve as building blocks for a civilization?
It would seem like there are people who are bound and determined to destroy civilized society at a fundamental level.
If it floats, eat more oats.
"Indeed, that is the credo many artists live by, not realizing that the bourgeoisie has moved on to the realm of not caring."
Yes- this! Thanks for summarizing the situation so perfectly.
Next up: Versace Vomitoriums!
The American Elite - at least for the last 90 years - has always been tasteless and vulgar. Its what makes their attacks on Trump so hilarious. Talk about the pot and the kettle. I guess the NYT's sex writer took the day off.
The American Elite - at least for the last 90 years - has always been tasteless and vulgar. Its what makes their attacks on Trump so hilarious. Talk about the pot and the kettle. I guess the NYT's sex writer took the day off.
The NYT instructs us to think of a public bathrooms as "an apt setting for art exploring identity, the body and discretion".
Um ... that used to be a crime a crime in England. Ask John Gielgud. Or better -- don't.
"I'll take 'Places I Avoid at all Cost' for $200, Alex."
Me. ME MEEEEEEEEEEE!
The driving force of much of today's "art".
Note I did not say "modern" art.
Thinking a rotting banana taped to a wall sends an emotional message? Sure. But the message is you are all idiots to buy this crap.
I forgot to praise Howard's post. Perfection.
The duality of privacy and shared space is what makes public restrooms violent pits of crime.
I've been saying "Art Is Shit" for a very long time, and look where we are now.
Nowadays the way to really épater les bourgeoisie is to emulate Thomas Kinkade or Bob Ross, or if you have actual talent, the academic realism of Bouguereau and Gérôme. For extra offense to the Manhattan/Islington luvvies, include some explicit Christian iconography.
I think of the Egyptian style bathrooms in the Fox Theatre in Atlanta and of the Parrots in tile in a Youth Hostel I once stayed at on Cape Cod as well as Duchamp's urinal which I have only read about. I've been considering a glass wall for my shower which I understand can be embossed with some works of Vincent Van Gogh.
I also thought of the train station rest room scene in Graham Greene's "Ministry of Fear" where all the toilets flush at once in response to an aerial bombing.
"For extra offense to the Manhattan/Islington luvvies, include some explicit Christian iconography."
Call it Piss Christ V2.0. The bourgeoisie can supply the pissoirs with crosses, and the luvvies can provide the piss. Interactive art...so hot right now.
Loved the Kohler Art Center restrooms.
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