Although I have recently been avoiding most Art mags – more out of laziness and poverty than principle – I have become quite a fan of Proximity Magazine. Issue 6 has just come out, with another interesting piece on photography by Rod Slemmons, and a lovely bit on excess and sacrifice by Noah Berlatsky. He is speaking of Batille’s notion of the world’s excess – its “accursed share” – and his recounting of the old Native American custom of potlatch as a way to gain rank above one’s enemies by giving away the greater gift. Artists, he suggests, are the closest contemporary practictioners of potlatch, sacrificing their work and selves to counteract the excess in the world, but often too willing to trade in their gifts just for money or more base exhibitions of status.
And yet…
That is not to say that all artists are inevitably defiled. On the contrary, if any contemporary figure attains to Bataille’s ideal of pure sacrifice it is one particular kind of artist — that is, the failed artist. Note that by “failed” here, I do not mean the artist who has missed commercial success, but has underground cred or aesthetic bonafides, or who is discovered and lionized after his death. On the contrary. When I say “failed” I mean “failed.” I mean an artist who profligately, copiously, obsessively works on creating objects that are, literally — by everyone and forever — unwanted. Creators of tuneless songs that never achieve dissonance; of ugly canvases too self-conscious to be outsider art; of doggerel verse too banal for even the high school literary magazine — in them, the excess of the universe is annihilated. Genius, love, life are exchanged for neither lucre, nor cred, nor beauty, but are instead simply thrown away. Failed art is permanently wasted, and it is therefore sacred. Squatting amidst the gross outpouring of sublimity, the ugly, the thumb-fingered, the clichéd piece of crap, is alone sacred.
Addendum: The Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World
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