034: 101 Things I Didn't Learn in Art School

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In terms of audience reception, art can be a source of ridicule and scandal in mainstream society: as seen in Marcel Duchamp’s notorious</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Fountain</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">– a readymade sculpture that’s a porcelain urinal flipped upside down and signed “R. Mutt”; but just as well, art can also create terrifying horror with a political charge (Edward Kienholz’s</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Five Car Stud</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">), spectral presence and spiritual depth (Louise Bourgeois’s</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Spiders</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">series) or art can become a psychedelic wonderland for the masses: as seen in Yayoi Kusama’s</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Infinity Mirrored Room</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">– a dazzling and diaphanous fractal maze of half-silvered mirrors that make one feel endless and glowing. But when it comes to how we feel and breathe about art’s raison d'être: What’s art’s purpose for existing? Who gets to make art? Who gets to experience art? Sadly and grotesquely, just the rich. In this capitalist hellscape of commodified depravity and celebrity-driven attention hoarding, all measures of real freedom, including the ability to choose a life in the arts, are reserved only for the rich</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">&</span></em> <span style= "font-weight: 400;">famous. No matter who you are or where you were born, there is an alternative version of you behind every dollar of your parents; the money your family has or doesn’t have, shapes the trajectory of your life and determines your available options. As such, this tragic lottery is ultimately a game best tossed into history’s garbage bin. Our co-hosts will reflect on lifetimes of dashed dreams, yearning for freedom and imagining what art might be like in a socialist future – sketching visions of a New Renaissance waiting just