I recently came across blogger Velvet Cigarette. Maybe I am just getting old… although I loved a handful of her MANY self-portraits and a bit of her catch-phrase prose, mostly I just thought the blog was a pretty basic reflection of an 18-year-old raised on American Apparel ads in an era where there has always been iTunes AND Vinyl, and Nylon Magazine. Corridor40 may not agree with me, but that’s a chance I am going to take.
Give me Lady GaGa in a bodysuit any day, but we can’t ALL just go prancing around in our all-together, emoting, 24/7 and expect anything really awe-striking to come of it. Give me the days of cultural revolution because it was needed not because it was somehow every teenager’s right of passage.
I know I appreciate the privilege of the blogosphere soapbox (clearly) but is it doing anyone any good, or are we just re-hashing a few inspirational/moving/striking ideas/images over and over again until we realize “there is nothing new under the sun” then immerse our selves back into the cycle to forget that ugly truth???
I am currently reading “A Short Life of Trouble” an auto biography by Marcia Tucker. I originally bought the book because I was buying up any art criticism/theory/commentary published in this decade – totally avoiding my sneaking suspicion that there just hasn’t been much that is REALLY important made in 30+ years. But the joke was on me – so far it is ALL ABOUT her hay-day interactions with artists from the likes of Marcel Duchamp to Bruce Nauman.
Now, I am not giving up yet, in fact reading this book has given me a boost of confidence in my own coming-of-age, perhaps. But what I am really interested in is – if something really worth-its-hype happened, would we even notice in the midst of the milieu of pop culture porno soup that we are drowning in?