Virilio, Baj
Discourse on the horror of art
Having become useless, not only is art horrified by itself but it also horrifies its audience who no longer understands it, ever since it became a business in the hands of experts.
How does an abandoned bottle of gin on the floor of a pavilion of the Venice Biennale attract a small crowd of admirers whispering ecstatic comments? The Italian painter Baj, one of the most outsanding artist of the XX Century, and the French urbanist and dromologue Virilio, question each other on the conditions and the perception of art and of the places that host and shoecase it. The current destiny of art, its evolution, seem to be one of the privileged positions from where to understand the sign of the times, having in fact the art market foretold the new economy and many other virtualities. In the ways by which art is related to, a sort of added value was produced that has become so important as make a serious critique impossible. Critique has become gossip and celebration, while the work of art becomes an icon of itself, devoid of an intrinsic meaning because reduced to a machine for producing pseudo-philosophies, pseudo-aesthetics, pseudo-problems.
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