How Tech Bros Warped the Art World
NFTs, Bart Simpson, KAWS, and the Anti-Elite Culture Wars
I’d assumed that the only way to become culturally sophisticated was to learn about culture. Opera. Theater. The symphony. Museum shows. Things you don’t go to. These you “attend.”
But I was wrong. Every Chekhov performance and Mahler symphony (the 8th twice!) was a waste. I didn’t have to do a thing to become culturally sophisticated. It turns out the culture would devolve so swiftly into stupidity that simply by staying a philistine yokel, I’d look like a genius. Especially with art. Which has descended into idiartcracy.
All the art I’ve read about in the last few years is some version of Homer Simpson killing Bart Simpson with lasers that shoot from his eyes. Or The Simpsons with their eyes x’ed out. (Sold for $14.7 million, possibly to Justin Bieber.) A very smart artist I met creates digital images of Lego sculptures of Air Jordans. It’s all Bro Art.
I know that art is often aggressively male: A Duchamp urinal here, a Damien Hirst bisected cow carcass there. But this new art isn’t hypermasculine fronting. This is hyperchildlike fronting. It’s art you would put on your childhood bedroom wall if you weren’t smart enough to understand why Dali’s clocks were melty. Not only is Beeple’s Abraham Lincoln spanking…
