The world is broken and it can't be fixed.
This is the philosophy of a street artist, the self-proclaimed outsider. Yet he has learned something from this broken world and has the courage to take up the challenge. He is an outsider—but a serious one.
The world is broken and it can't be fixed. Thats what he tells us in his film, and, as he tells us again and again, in a new set of characters who make him question whether he is a fool or a murderer. At one point, he realizes that he is the fool. He realizes that he has killed his friends. He realizes that he is a murderer. And he is.The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue raisonné that was as bizarre as it was beautiful. The catalogue was a collection of quotations from the history of art, and it included a text by the artist, a video by the critic, a letter by the critic to the artist, a letter to the gallery, and a photo of the artist in his studio. And there were a lot of notes, notes of all sorts, written by the artist, by the critic, and by the artist himself, in a nonchalant, almost too-personal, almost too-personal way. In the end, it was a kind of art-world summary of the life of a murderer, and it was all very, very strange.The show included a large number of paintings from the series of works that he did between 1971 and 1988 in which he collaborated with a number of other artists, which are on display here. They are paintings in the sense of being pictures, which is to say, the works are not just pictures. They are paintings in the sense of being an experience of reality. They are paintings that are an experience of the world, a reality that is both real and imaginary. And they are paintings that are paintings in the sense of being a representation of reality. They are pictures that make the world real, and they make the world real. But what makes it real, what makes it real is the experience of reality, the experience of reality that makes painting, reality, and art, reality.
The world is too big. So what can we do? Only the two groups who are least likely to be interested in making any kind of change—those who can afford it and those who cant—can change it.
This was the idea behind The Broken World, a show curated by Erwin Panofsky and Zalman Lewer, both of the Art Institute of Chicago. Panofsky and Lewer presented a vision of the world as a knot of contradictions and tensions and the artist as a sort of messenger between the worlds forces. Panofsky and Lewer put together a superbly conceived exhibition, but one that left one with a few lingering questions: Who should have been included? Who should not have been? Who should have been?Who should have been included? Panofsky and Lewer clearly see that the world is an enormous mess and that the art world is a part of that mess, a part of the problem, and that art is a place where the world is made and found. The world is made and found through a process of creation that is of an almost total, sometimes destructive nature. Panofsky and Lewer suggest that art can be a tool of communication, a means of reaching people who otherwise have no voice. Yet, in the end, the art world is another kind of social messiah, and the artist is its messenger. Panofsky and Lewer suggest that the artist is an agent of change, and therefore of change, but they also suggest that art is a form of communication, and therefore, of change, and therefore, of change. Panofsky and Lewer are clearly convinced that art is a social messiah.
But that is exactly the point.
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