"...I guess I would kill the dinosaur of Post-Modernism. I would expose the lazy 'cult of genius' for the naked emperor it is. I am tired of young art students getting into the crap-ass school of their choice and getting all hopped up on figurative painting, then getting the smack-down from their bitter teacher who leaned to paint during the Sixties when craftsmanship was a dirty word. The student is 'reminded' that figurative painting is dead, and the hundred-year-old path of Modernism is where it's at. The poor student looks up to this antiquated jackass in his rumpled, pleated, khaki clown-suit and actually believes his rhetoric. The student also learns that it is a shitload easier to be considered a genius when you have work that functions as a smokescreen for your incompetence. Look, if you chuck poo-poo at a piece of cardboard and call it 'The Throws of Man's Discontent,' you could be considered a genius pretty fast. But if you have to learn how to paint flesh... man, that could take years (if it ever happens). Who has time for that? You see what I mean about painting making me angry?"

- Doc Hammer (of Venture Bros. fame), 2004

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, since the Brandeis art dept. didn't exactly force conceptual art down my throat-- but then, nor did they give me much in the way of concrete instruction on painting realistically, until I arranged an independent study. (I suppose letting students flounder is preferable to active indoctrination, but still). My own education aside, a tour of several galleries in Chelsea, NYC helped cement my notion that "modern art" has not only run its course, but it has begun to putrefy. The important work of rebellion or protest is over (and, arguably, has been since the days of Duchamp, or Pollack at the latest), and what has kept on accumulating for the last few decades amounts to a pile of crusty post-wank. Will I back this opinion up? No. I wrote a facebook note about it in much greater detail, which I do not care to repost here. BUT, Doc agrees with me, so discussion = over.

Oh and about my life. I live in Somerville and work at an organic food store. I'm not the busiest man in the world, but then I do have the late shift, and I have never in my life been able to creatively apply myself before noon. So I have a single project which is rather tediously in the works, and will probably remain so through mid-December. Ta!