You Don't Own Creativity.
A Clown's Manifesto for Fuck the Art World. [In response to Jeff Koons' shrine to Apollo.]
Fuck art on remote Grecian islands.
Fuck grant cycles.
Fuck postmodern collections.
Fuck creative retreats.
Fuck juried exhibitions.
Fuck ARTFORUM.
Fuck the arbiters of taste.
Fuck privileged destinations.
Fuck gatekeepers.
Make art in ghettos. Make art for no one. Make art that stinks. Make art that dies stillborn. Make art that has no ambition. Make art out of trash, out of your skin, out of your mind. Make art that lives for a nanosecond, for a year, forever.
Put art where no one expects it. Put it in Citibank lobbies. Put it in the wallets of the poor. Put it on the clogged freeways. Put art in the human heart, the beating human heart of every child that has not yet learned to speak.
Fuck “What does it mean?”
Fuck “Doesn’t go with my furniture.”
Fuck “I could do that.”
Then DO THAT.
Art is not a luxury. Art is a way of being. Art is a way of seeing. Art is a window. Art is a rope. Art is a helicopter airlifting you out of a burning building. Art cuts off your legs and leaves you crippled for life. Art gives you crutches. Art knew your great-grandfather and got drunk with him before he lost his life fighting in the Ardennes. Art caresses your face while you wake, while you fall asleep, while you take your last breath, your first.
CREATE! Create a new life. Create a way of walking. Create a small city with your breakfast waffles. Create a frame. Create yourself. Create. Create! CREATE!
“Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape! You are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded.
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no,
And am around, tireless, tenacious, acquisitive,
And cannot be shaken away.”
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself