foul mood

I am in a foul mood for one reason or another, so I thought I would rant a bit about my subject of choice.
The New York Times had an article in the Arts section today about a four year old whose paintings are being compared to Jackson Pollock’s. Well, duh. That is not a hard one figure out. They are quite similar. I have seen his paintings as well as the kid’s. Nearly identical. Now, I am all for creativity and people calling whatever they want to call art art and I understand the movement of the time. I think it should be left to the creator of the work. A friend sent over a story about some dude’s installation in some fancy museum being mistaken by the janitor for trash, so the janitor threw it out. If its art to the artist and the fancy museum curator, fine. The thing that really annoys me is that all of this work, the little kid’s paintings, Pollock’s work and the ‘trash’ installation all sell for ridiculous amounts of money. Artists like to crawl up their own behinds and take themselves really seriously and make all kinds of deep statements that they feel should be worth somebody’s yearly salary to own. Folks in the art industry promote this. I don’t like artists myself. They are flaky…and weird. To assume that your painting or whatever your craft is really worth so much money is arrogant. People buy it because people will buy anything especially if there is enough hype and they think they are the only ones to have it. Its an investment. It has little to do with art. And the perpetuation of that practice has been virtually the death of art… or at least the institutionalization of it. It becomes inaccessible and gives the illusion that you have some rare talent or insight into some mystery and thus should be highly paid for it.. Obviously not true from looking at the kid’s art and Pollock’s art. Its the same. Shoot, I could do it….