How Art Became Irrelevant
&gt; Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of his own urine was called &quot;Piss Christ.&quot;<p>I remember when this was part of the national debate around the NEA. The reason that the people seeking to defund this stuff was that it simply was garbage as art. If classic art sought to pull on &quot;positive&quot; emotions and move and inspire; modern art seemed determined to confuse and then move on to outrage.<p>Somewhere in this dwelling in negative emotions, modern art became indistinguishable from a satire that nobody was bothering to produce. It was an overly serious bunch of belly button dwelling backed by amateurishly crafted production most pre-schoolers regularly produced. Instead it became a game of one-upsmanship and gross-outs devised in the minds of 10 year old boys. Anything that wasn&#x27;t deliberately trying to rile the audience was laughable &quot;craftsmanship&quot; and interesting in any way. The art scene became incestuous and further and further isolated itself from any potential audience.<p>Classical art was put out in public places for any passerby to see -- Michelangelo&#x27;s &quot;David&quot; was displayed in a public courtyard. While it&#x27;s true that classic forms became tired and formulaic, the modernist movements didn&#x27;t generally replace those forms with anything of particular value.<p>There&#x27;s interesting things going on in art in the modern world, but modern art isn&#x27;t one of them.