art

Yet what they best represent is the current state of art, where artists must skillfully package themselves as products for buyers to consume.

It’s precisely the kind of work that is uncomfortable for most artists, who by definition concern themselves with what it means to be a person in the world, not what it means to be a brand.

Unlike a more classic European operatic takedown of capitalist America—like Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s brutal “Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny”— these productions seem committed to imitation rather than meaning. They never elevate their scattered details to the level of myth. The productions are a collection of curios, a dress-up that... See more

Yet, the definition of art hasn’t changed in 100 years, as W. David Marx explained in our recent conversation: “The best way to understand art is against kitsch. Kitsch is things that are made based on existing expectations of your audience. Usually it appeals to sentimentality because that's a universal aesthetic reaction. But art is something... See more