I like to think of this journal as having nominally to do with rope and it's eroto-mystical potentials, but it is, I think, slowly shaping up to be something to do with art and aesthetics too (albeit often run through a mangle). Maybe the bottom line is infected by the virus - likely less-dormant in me than in most, for it is indeed present in all - that resists the conventionalizing, commodifying and homogenizing blandishments of the dominant corporatist paradigm (capitalist that I am, I do have a lively and legitimate conflict theorist in me).Now and again, but rarely, an artist perfectly encapsulates the resistance and thus the essentially humane act that is art-making. One is less likely to find game-changing art in a museum, for once it has made it that far it has been thoroughly vetted and assigned a value. It has become the convention in which it now floats, a host rather than fundamentally immune. Some artists are conscious of this progression and harness it to wryly humorous effect, such as in the case of Damien Hirst's $200M two day Sotheby's auction , held in bold defiance of the standards and practices of the broker/dealer/gallery model, or even more obviously in the impish indifference of Takashi Murakami to the art world's tut-tutting of his branding efforts. His recent show at the Brooklyn Museum was titled © Murakami.
But the guy you'll never see in a museum (unless he's doing a stealth installation) is Banksy. His metier simply doesn't allow for segregation, although it is happily and fittingly ghettoized. We here in (relatively) humble Brooklyn now have a few insights from the elusive savant of aesthetic subversion to show for having kept our house welcoming (but not so tarty that Banksy's elegant lipsticking were not juxtaposed on any less than an authentic pig).
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