by Jesse P. Martin on August 24, 2011
Last summer, while visiting my parents in New Jersey, my mom gave me a copy of Kafka's The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces. It's a slim tome sporting Kafka's greatest hits, full of strange manners and clean cruelties. It reads something like a mutant antique: musty but weirdly fresh, arcane and possibly very dangerous.
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by Nate Hill on August 11, 2011
Most people do not care about art. They watch TV, they fuss over their cats, they drink with their friends. As a result, artists who want their work to reach those outside the art world usually need to do a lot of legwork on their own.
Art has to come to people, because people have shown they're not going to come to art. Presenting artworks only to the already-defined art world assumes art needs that context to affect people, but that's not true. Good work speaks with a clarity and force that doesn't need to be framed by the art world, and should be spread to as many people as possible. One way to appeal to the non-gallery going population is to create a media spectacle — it's a proven way to draw attention and distinguish oneself from the competition. With so many artists working today, it would be dumb to ignore the spectacle's possibilities.
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