baubles and babble

The gazing ball "represents the vastness of the universe and at the same time the intimacy of right here, right now". 

[And both are remarkably empty right here, right now]

'"This experience is about you," says Koons, your desires, your interests, your participation, your relationship with this image."

"Everybody enjoyed Titian."

"Everybody's in this dialogue of sharing enjoyment and pleasure." 

Two thousand years of civilisation and this is what it's come down to? The staged provocation doesn't even provoke any more since it's such old hat. At best it will elicit a smile which, despite everything, cannot hide a sense of pity for this imbecile and the culture that reduces everything to "enjoyment" (as the yanks are wont to say: "Enjoy!"). 

Of course, it's not joy but pleasure-and any kind of undistinguished pleasure (pushpin, poetry..it's only a matter of taste, it is said).

If a single line could encapsulate what it means to live in an era of late capitalism it is this: "your desires, your interests, your participation, your relationship with this image." The cult of the self, except like Oakland, when you get there there isn't any there there. There, there.

I suppose in an age when jokers like Trump and Carson can be the main candidates for the greatest democracy money can buy you shouldn't be too surprised. Koons, as someone said, is the Trump of the 'art world'.

Words of wisdom from the main man:

"So we have to be saying, how do we make them [ISIS] look like losers?" And you thought Walker was dumb?

Another perceptive commentator had this to say: "at least the Romans had orgies to distract them from the decline of their civilisation."

~

The Pope says that the church should shun conservatism an fundamentalism as solutions. Right on. But given the way religion has been reduced to an empty shell you don't see many prospects of that happening. And it remains to be seen whether it can engage with science and liberalism without its inner spirit being completely dissipated.

But these lines struck you nevertheless:

"I would like an Italian church that is unsettled, always closer to the abandoned, the forgotten, the imperfect."

~~