Would have been 80 yesterday. He would approve of the inability to distinguish art from crap.

Do you own an Apple iPod, drink Pepsi, buy cool cheap-but-good design from Target?

This design is what you hate that Pepsi and Nike are trying to buy for their products and marketing. Would you rather products today be devoid of design? You call it a commodity, but it's a necessary part of the aesthetics that Americans under 50 want in their products.

What I hear is that the artists you like should stay struggling. The artists you don't like should be the one's working design and art for corporations. That seems... arbitrary.

Sure they struggle with their decision. For all the money they are being paid, they are expected to apply their art to something they may not love. I have to do the same, as do you. Our "arts" just arent as cool... but they all pay the mortgage and get our kids through school.

-Chris

Interesting review. The most obvious comment is that this sort of art -- divorced from tradition, without intellectual or moral reference points -- is what happens when art education is effectively abolished. You can see this sort of thing in the rural American South, where folk artists, most of them equally devoid of canonical knowledge, assemble their own brand of "Alleged" art out of the cultural and physical materials surrounding them: Old tires, rusted automobile parts, road signs and fundamentalist theology.

But there's another, less obvious point to be made here, pertaining to your response. No one ever complains that Velasquez "sold out," or Rembrandt, or Gainsborough, even though the vast majority of their work was executed on behalf of 1) the church, 2) a member of the nobility, or 3) a wealthy merchant. (Da Vinci spent most of his time designing military weaponry: How does that play nowadays?) Prior to the nineteenth century in the West, and continuing almost to the present day in other parts of the world, artistic traditions have essentially concerned the glorification of institutional or personal power. Your insistence that art is somehow concerned with "self-expression," or that it exists or ought to exist independently of commercial demands, itself betrays a certain ignorance of our artistic tradition -- and specifically, of its cultural context.

What is the difference, then, between a work of art that commemorates the military prowess of Emperor Napoleon, and one that commemorates the corporate power of Nike (besides the unfortunate fact that military prowess is usually more lethal than corporate power)? What is the difference between a work of art that presents the institutional values of Pepsi Cola, and another work of art that presents the institutional values of a university that pays said artist's salary? What does the Whitney Biennial celebrate, and what does it sell?

in response to Chris N- I did not see this review as saying that artists should stay struggling to be one, i believe instead it raises questions that need thinking about, especially since the impact from most of these people in the film is so wide. Personally, when I heard McFetridge say he really "put one over" on pepsi, it made me want to throw up- and that it goes completely unchallenged i found a serious shortcoming in the work. without passing judgement, what is most interesting about this group (at least to me) is that they took the leap that many of their punk rock heroes didn't or couldn't- are these artists or advertising executives? is the film being put out by nike, or is it a nike film? is it selling out if you dont compromise your work in any way?

Boy, you said it. I was thinking exactly the same thing when I read this sentence in the article:

"Whatever you make of the allegedly subversive content of their work, they come the closest to having old-school art careers."

Considering O'Hehir already bemoaned contemporary artists' lack of knowledge about 16th-19th century art history, I figured his idea of "old-school" would be a little different. Everyone knows the great painters of the Renaissance all worked on commission. Making money from art is not a problem on its face. (I think it was the Van Gogh mystique that started this whole idea). What matters - and what's lacking in today's visual artists - are talent, technique, and an individual style and vision forged from long hours of training and thought.

It's all part of the "American Idol" mindset that seems to have infected all corners of our culture. People want to be admired, and they want to be rich. No one cares for developing their craft or personal betterment. Just go out and find a hundred kids who say they want to be a musician or a singer, and then find out how many are actually taking instrument or voice lessons. Find all the young people who say they want to act, and see how many of them are taking workshops or honing their technique in tiny, little-known theater productions.

It's not Nike who's destroyed the art world, it's all of us who've made "being famous" something to aspire to.

>>Your insistence that art is somehow concerned with "self-expression," or that it exists or ought to exist independently of commercial demands, itself betrays a certain ignorance of our artistic tradition -- and specifically, of its cultural context.<<

I never said or implied any such thing. And all I meant by "old-school art careers" is that those artists are getting paid by art institutions of various more familiar kinds. Art and money have been inextricably linked throughout their shared history, and I believe I was very careful to avoid any explicit value judgment, except in my honest response to McFetridge. I suggest that these questions need some careful examination, but that's really all. I don't claim to have the answers and do not advocate a return to some imaginary and unreclaimable past.

Medieval and renaissance artists made art for their rich patrons and in service to the church. 21st century artists make art for rich people and in service to multinational corporations. I don't see anything especially new or shocking about this arrangement.

Warhol isn't forever remembered as that guy who drew shoes for Woolworth's advertisements, is he?

Pointed out to his curator at MoMA that one of his paintings, was accidentally hung upside down. To those of you who know his black rectangles work, you'll get the joke.

Man, this conflict has gone on a loooong time and I've spent a fair share of my time thinkin about it. Look up "Tibor Kalman" and "Half Empty." At this point the only proposition I would venture for people engaged in this debate (wherever they are) is to imagine what it feels like to have these artists do their thing in open space without having it hogtied to some big sell, marketing campaign or whatnot. I mean the artists who really have hit the zeitgeist on the head. Not even the head-scratchers (giant clothespins & fabric wrappings). In the AJC just this past weekend designers/artists were solicited to propose murals to surround idle construction sites (due to economic slow-down). And the results...POPped. Really. I like the idea of art & design defining our spaces, public and even private, without bringing product along with them. Outside of galleries or museums. Those oh-so-trendy colors and patterns without a single logo anywhere to be found. I can't describe the feeling...less confrontational? Let me know what you think on that.