The hope is that today’s ongoing demolition of taste and further emptying of images of meaning might clear a path for new kinds of strangeness or beauty, that it will return to images some of the mystery that has been lost and give them some new, or a very old power.

The Vulgar Image reflects the artificial and desireless qualities of the present. It is pornography for a society that is losing its lust and physicality, and it is very perverse, more perverse than tired old pornography, because it has such an unnatural relationship with the body and with fantasy. It is distanced from the fleshly, just as people,... See more

There is mutual animosity between the high and low arts. The majority of internet culture is low-brow, populist, and made in knowing or dumb opposition to high art and culture’s aesthetic and moral values. Contemporary art, likewise, no longer has or seeks to have a connection with popular visual culture. While traditional folk and outsider art... See more

There is too much beauty in the world. There is too much beauty and there are more beautiful people than there have ever been, and they are generally beautiful in the same way. With trompe l’oeil make-up, fillers, and photo editing, they have given themselves the same face and made same kinds of images of themselves.

When pornography is endless and freely available, when what was once considered deviant is now celebrated, when everything is accepted and there are very few sexual taboos left, then sexual vulgarity, innuendo, and transgression become almost impossible. When nothing is left to the imagination, there is nothing left to be surprised by.

The Earth is a camera, so realism must be abandoned, and so must be the convincing illusion.

To thrive in the new world with all its accelerating complexity and overproduction, it suggests, one must either be a genius or a braindead, unthinking moron – and, by the same token, to make the most brilliant and sophisticated artworks, or the dumbest, most off-putting content possible. Bad taste is a way of standing out when there are too many... See more

The Vulgar Image is the expression of machines, and those who have had their brains scrambled by machines. It is the true image of our time: the image of how we are corrupted and changed by images.

They are Vulgar Images. They share certain qualities: they are figurative, tasteless, illegible, stupid, fake, disembodied, grotesque, transformed. Some are ludicrously offensive, but it is unlikely that many are that offended by them, as the event horizon of trolling was crossed some while ago. They are also extremely contemporary images.