As a disgruntled art gallery security guard, I've often wondered what makes Andy Warhol's soup can a work of art, while my soup can is merely... recyclable. Is it because Andy Warhol was the first to pass a soup can off as art? If so, how does that explain why even the thousandth soup can he painted is still considered art? Maybe the first one said to some critics, "hey, he's saying that mass-marketed products have taken on the role of art in our consumer culture" or somthing. Or maybe they never thought that Warhol just really, really, liked soup. But if the first soup can meant something, then what did the 100th soup can mean? Now, something like Allan Ginsberg's HOWL, that was a poem that sort of "broke" through in pop culture the way the soup can did, but if Ginsberg went over to Kinko's and ran xerox copies of it, how much would they be worth today? A dollar, maybe. I hear that Warhol didn't even do the silkscreens of the soup can himself. He had a bunch of assistants do them. Warhol merely smiled, patted their heads approvingly, signed the backs of the canvasses, and the backs of the checks. How much is one of these "supervised soup can" silkscreens worth today? More than I make in a year. I could buy a lot of soup with that money. Real soup. The guy who buys that $30,000. Campbell's soup can silkscreen, do you think he ever actually eats Campbell's soup? Has he ever even used a can opener? Of course not. Every night he is getting $8 plastic containers of wild mushroom bisque delivered hot from Eli's Bakery.
Then there's Rauschenberg or whomever with the black canvasses, and the guy with the all white canvasses. Now, okay, maybe if I studied up a bunch of art history I would know that the black canvas signifies the saturation of the art market to the point of obtusity whatever that is, or, maybe, it portrays an inkblot in the dead of night. But if I paint a canvas all black, then what does it mean? It doesn't mean nothing. I am not Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg's all-black canvas, that's a masterpiece. My black canvas, that's crap. Who says so? The guy at Artforum.
Meanwhile, let's say you go to Rite Aid and to buy some anti-depressants and they have the Rite aid generic version right next to the brand name. The brand name is $3 more. You buy the brand name, because.... why? Would it interest you to know that a lot of the time the Brand name makes the generic one too, it's the SAME stuff, but the brand name charges more for it's label, to cover advertising? In other words, you are paying for the name, not the product. That's what the art world is all about, man, the name. They might just as well put up a bunch of signatures.
Granted, Picasso was a genius, but on an off-day, some of the stuff he did was crap and even he would maybe have agreed that a six year old child could have done better. Personally, I think the averagely talented six-year old child does better work than most of those south o'Houston contemporary cats. But regardless, Picasso is a name that sells. Look, I have a piece of newspaper Picasso scribbled some numbers on while he was talking to his accountant on the phone. It's worh $90,000.
Don't even get me started on this guy Cy Twombly. He scribbles in pencil a bunch of abstract cursive writing on a white piece of paper, erases some parts, and that's art. The critic points out, adoringly, that he is making wry commentary on the notebooks of Leonardo Da VInci. Okay, so I do urinate on a napkin, and that is my sizzling commentary on Cy Twombly. Does the critic stand up and notice? No, behind me a young Soho-ite is vomitting on the floor, and it is pronounced a stirring eulogy to the late Jean-Michel Basquiat. I, however, am simply asked to leave.