I know, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself.
You have perhaps already read that a banana duct-taped to the wall has been declared a sculpture and sold (in three versions) for $120,000 or more each. This is only the latest demonstration of the farcical level to which the art world has sunk in the (post)modern era.
There is an absurd pretentiousness about it all. Consider the words of the gallery’s founder, Emmanuel Perrotin:
Prior to the reported sale, Perrotin told CNN the bananas are “a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor,” adding that the artist turns mundane objects into “vehicles of both delight and critique.”
Such is the vacuous defense of the debasement of art in a culture that has lost sight of truth and goodness. Those are the three characteristics classically referred to as the “transcendentals”: the true, the beautiful, and the good. It makes sense that our cultural elites, who have so constantly twisted the truth and perverted goodness would develop a debased sense of beauty.
The ready reply is that, by seeing foolishness here instead of brilliant artistic satire, I only show myself to be a Philistine who doesn’t understand art. Ignorance is why someone like me rejects modern art. This is the paradox of our educational system; somehow, adequate education and enlightenment is supposed to produce people who think a duct-taped banana is art, and that eating that banana is “performance art.”
Yet there is a comfort in the observation of common grace. I think that this story is so widely publicized because most people see this situation for what it is. Only those initiated into the nonsense of (post)modern art are deceived by this; only the elitists are buying it–figuratively and literally.
Credo ut Intelligam 