One art, please!

James Howard Kunstler's most recent podcast on "art"--as "therapy" for "amateurs and children"--is brilliant. Indeed, his pronunciation of the word throughout the (20 minute) show is itself somehow evocative of art's present-day essence: a kind of unwieldy concretion of bubble-gum, bauxite and a few balled-up pages from Dadaism for Dummies.

Keep your commonplace book handy as there is much that is quotable here. For instance:

"[So much of the art in public spaces] is a make-work project for people on the margins of the economy, including the artists themselves."

"[This is] art that is not connected to artistry or craft. It is simply the banging together of modular materials."

"It's no longer OK to just protest through self-abasement that we're living in a crap culture. Now we have to get beyond the crap culture and build a real culture."

And note the coining of the phrase "Rape-o-matic public space". Highly recommended.