Art in the Ownership Society
If you’re looking for the latest signs of America’s cultural descent into inanity, look no further than this weekend’s Sunday Styles section in the New York Times, and its review of Maria Abramovic’s performance piece at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s recent fundraising gala.
What you’ll find is a double-dose of a certain kind of worship; on one hand, there’s Abramovic herself, whose willingness to serve as the evening’s “benevolent despot” stems from her own love of the power to make powerful people do her bidding amidst a surreal backdrop of human centerpieces, heads emerging through holes in tables, and mandatory white lab coats being donned by partygoers whose fancy outfits were intended to provide their own form of artistic expression. And then there’s the Times review itself, which is less about journalist Guy Trebay’s assessment of Abramovic’s ability to surface submerged truths through her art, and more about his own infatuation with the event’s outer trappings, from its 800 socialite and celebrity attendees to Abramovic’s “$1,500
