beginnings

Immaterial Culture is born out of an idea for a blog I had over ten years ago, more an online arts magazine for several artist friends of mine to write without editorial shenanigans. One was a former editor of a flashy international arts magazine who quit in disgust when a savage piece of criticism regarding an exhibition at a New York gallery had the owner of such gallery call the publisher in outrage, the publisher then gave that gallery the next three covers. My own similar experience was being assigned to review a show that I thought was endemic of the artworlds collective failure in promoting art that required reading a multi-page manifesto explaining the works value as Art, my takedown of the show was denied publication and I shortly ceased writing for the journal because of the lack of integrity of the editor and publisher.

Most artists I know bemoan the lack of decent art criticism, criticism that is intelligent, to the point and not full of smoke and mirrors hiding the fact that the art being written about is bad or good. Somehow it was acceptable at one point to write plain and utter crap that was hailed as being meaningful, well that was the late 80’s and early 90’s.

That is not to say that writing or reading about art is an easy endeavor, we sometimes have no other choice than to write in ‘heady’ terms that would confuse the average lay person. Why laypeople should think art criticism or cultural criticism or any intellectual discussion for that matter should be easy, befuddles me. I wouldn’t expect to pick up a science journal for professionals in the field and understand the majority of what is being written because I am not a professional scientist. Hence we or I will sometimes, if not often venture into heady territory but I will try my best to make my thoughts and ideas as accessible as possible but I also make no guarantees.

I publish this somewhat anonymously because I want the freedom to write down my thoughts and feelings without fear of retribution within the artworld because I am an artist who must unfortunately live with the world I am given and artists, dealers and the general milieu of people in the arts industry are rather shady and immoral, in my opinion but this is nothing new.

Finally, the writings, ramblings and thoughts are just that. They are not carved in stone and my opinion is my opinion, not the word of god, not sacrosanct, not prescriptions just observations about art and culture and more than likely, immaterial.