'my child could draw that blobs' doesn't mean that a child COULD draw that, but refers to a specific trend of abstract art that kinda takes anything that was good from the genre and recycles it into sellable paintings ideal for hanging on the walls of the middleclass. It's prettymuch a plague that has ruined the art scene over the past few years, as the market plummeted and so galleries decided to play it safe and have inoffensive blobs of colour instead of meaningful art. I personally get more inspired by doodles on toilet walls than I do by this safe, bland decorative cack that has taken over previously respictible areas like cork street.
And it's kinda bad that it gets grouped with the abstract art moevement, like that had things to say, emotions, ideas and thoughts to express, but the visual element has just been adopted and smoothed out. There was this woman on my course (random comment: was in the 2nd season of big brother, and hated jade, so gets default respect for that) who did this kind of stuff, and was kind of open about the fact that there was no real ideas behind it, it is just colour paterns. She ended the degree doing something that was visually quite interesting, but there was no content behind it, and it just ended up kinda like all flash and no substance.
That's prettymuch what banksy is, when you see guys like Blec le rat, and then banksy, it's just whoa, banksy is an imitator who is just copying this visual style without any real idea about what it means, and just sugarcoating it with the kind of generic psuedo-political imagery which wouldn't look out of place as doodles in a year 10's history notebook. And you end up with safe imagery being sold for sooo much money, when it's not saying or doing anything new or interesting, and just providing a kind of pg-friendly rated version of the movement's 18 rated works.
I kinda feel that banksy is one of those borderline people, that the general public like but the art community is in disagreement over, kinda like Dali who is like incredibly popular amongst non-artists, but inside the scene is one of the monst controversial and hated figures (I'm on the anti-dali camp, I'm much more of an Ernst guy)
Man i have become the very thing I used to hate, a pretentious art-douche. I wonder when I'll buy a che t-shirt, I already wear a soviet jacket :o
Private eye is generally really good, the thing that pisses me off with it is the class-elitism which runs through elements like where guests on quiz shows get wrong answers, and it's like, the questions are about classical lit or something, things which the education system barely mention exists, of course people aren't gunna know that stuff!? But it's stories on corruption and dodgy practices are nifty, and it's kinda funny how it spends years telling a story, and then five years later a normal paper will mention it like it's some shocking exclusive new discovery. And Private eye's report on the lockerbye bombing is prettymuch essential reading for anybody who cares about the international political scene, it explains who were responsible (note: it was a syrian organisation operating in germany, who even owned up to it) and how the cia pressured witnesses into lying because at the time, syria were allies but libya were evil evil enemies. i am starting to ramble. Buit if you kinda ignore pe's class bias, and find diana jokes funny (because they are, though it's more to do with the media's view of her rather than her as a person, who i couldn't care less about) then it's good.
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