File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1996/96-11-30.184, message 60


Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 11:39:07 -0500 (EST)
From: George Free <aw570-AT-freenet.toronto.on.ca>
Subject: Re: Transnacionala review


On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Peter Werner wrote:

> "TRANSNACIONALA":  A New World Order Comes To Seattle
> by Frances DeVuono
> [from "Aorta: Contmporary Arts and Culture", Oct/Nov 96]
> 
> comment. Neither did they respond to Shapiro's very relevant remarks 
> that today "it is hard to imagine artists playing an avant-garde role 
> in contemporary culture [because] . . . everything is culture; the 
> difference between art and advertising is too difficult to define." 

	I don't find it too difficult to define the difference. 
Advertising involves--an invariably quite transparent attempt--to manipulate 
and pre-program a response. Art--or, at least, genuine art--has the 
opposite aim of liberating the receiver from the neurotic compulsions 
that advertising dwells on and reinforces.
	It seems that its "avant-garde" today to insist on this basic
distinction. That some artists and critics can't--or won't--tell the
difference between advertising and art simply testifies to their own
bankruptcy. 

		George Free		aw570-AT-torfree.net
		Toronto, Ontario
		Canada





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