Epic Account
Relevant links
Legendary Account - an art performance by Joel Holmberg
Exhibition catalogue for Free (Oct 2010 - Jan 2011) at the New Museum, NY where Legendary Account was exhibited
Joel Holmberg’s Legendary Account is a good artwork because it is a critics artwork; which is to say, of course, that it is not a good artwork at all but rather an artwork that contains a suitable level of vagueness so as to make it possible for theorists to toss it around at will, in service of this or that argument.
The artwork’s purpose is to allow the critic to set up the familiar proposition: This does something to that. The ‘this’ is always the artwork and the ‘that’ is usually some element of culture from both within and outside the art world. The ‘does something’ is the preferred floating signifier of the critic. In criticism of conceptual and avant-garde art (and their various neos and posts) these words tend toward the negative. So, this subverts that, or this parodies that, or this challenges our preconceived notions about that. In reality however these artworks rarely do anything as drastic as is claimed but rather they ‘point’ to things. This points to some feature of that.
The discourse surrounding such art is one of highlighting and ‘making aware’. In this way the artist is not required to provide much in the way of form or content because his main job is simply to point at things he observes in the world. The critic is then free to fill in the blanks in whatever way she chooses.
It’s a useful (lazy?) strategy for both artist and critic and one that is incredibly successful. It’s also a stitch-up.
Legendary Account is a cute artwork. But does it have any value whatsoever unless supported by a battery of critics lining up to explain it? Wouldn’t it be equally possible to just call fail and submit it to one of the numerous blogs that deal with inane and ridiculous Yahoo! Answers questions? Indeed is it possible to know whether the questions that appear on such sites are genuine or have been planted by someone seeking to ‘subvert’ the system?
In response to Legendary Account I’ve lifted phrases from the online catalogue for Free about Holmberg’s work and submitted them to Yahoo! Answers in order to ‘subvert’, ‘explore’, ‘question’, and ‘challenge the legitimacy’ of art criticism.
I JUST DID AN ART PERFORMANCE. WANT TO CHECK OUT MY DOCUMENTATION?
It’s called Epic Account
I’ve just subverted art criticism. Yay! for me.
I guess I’ll leave it to someone else to explain what it means that no one on Yahoo! Answers has answered any of these questions.
