This fine looking and hefty tome is on the way
THE 25 PAINTINGS 2014 contains the words:
Artists are flunkies. They are flunkies to Power. Where the Power resides, shifts through history. From the Pharaohs, via the Vatican, to Saatchi and the many stations between and beyond, artists can be found wallowing in their flunky ways
Power wants what Art has. What the Artist can provide makes Power feel good about themselves, it defines who they are, and it confirms their power not only to themselves but to all the others that they are wanting to impress with their power
Come the revolution Drummond, you and your 25 so called paintings will have no use let alone value. They wont even be much use as building material for the barricades. At most we could break them up and use them as kindling to keep us true revolutionaries warm at night as we (wo)man those barricades
My theory went something like this: all big art was the art of bullies, dictators or dominant cultures, be it Imperial Rome, Stalins Russia or the free market economy of the liberal West. For me, there was little difference between the games in the Colosseum, Soviet realism, U2 playing a stadium gig, a Spielberg movie, a Jackson Pollock hanging on the walls of MOMA, or for that matter whatever is currently drawing the crowds in the Turbine Hall.
It is all the big bullying art of the dominant culture telling us who knows best. And all we are expected to do is bow down, grovel, genuflect, take the lashing or just buy the merchandise. It is irrelevant what the artists intentions are in making the art; the only thing that really counts is the role the art plays within the culture in which it exists
Dont love my baby for her pouting lips
Dont love my baby for her curvy hips
I love my baby cause she does good sculptures, yeah!
The Rezillos (1977)
http://eastsideprojects.org/shop/the-25-paintings-catalogue