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Hi-Res 2000
by Dennis Kardon		  
     
  New Year's resolutions don't work and are a complete waste of time. I propose the art world make a different set of resolutions, designed to make reality a little clearer, sharper and easier to handle.

In the new millennium:

1.    The Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim Museum building should be prohibited from showing art and solely be open for trade shows. Considering the Guggenheim's history as an international showcase, handling vendors showing the products of foreign designers should receive priority.

2.    An MBA should be required for all museum trustees, directors and curators. Museums should only show works by artists whom the trustees of their museum have collected. A work can be said to be "compelling" according to how many bodies it can move from point A to an exit through retail.

3.    Public museums should pay politicians out of their marketing budgets to criticize artwork on display in the museums as offensive.

4.    Getting an MFA should be contingent upon being exhibited in a commercial gallery. Group exhibitions are acceptable. Students who fail to graduate must join a rock band. After ten sold-out solos an artist must make an unsuccessful major motion picture.

5.    The opportunity for major museum exhibitions of major collections should be auctioned off to collectors or dealers at Christie's or Sotheby's. Solo shows by artists at hip alternative spaces and small museums can be auctioned on artnet.com.

6.    A critic may only write positively about an artist in return for sexual favors. A slap in the face at a gallery opening is not considered a sexual favor.

7.    Artists should stop making artworks and instead do something else that they can document and exhibit in an art gallery. Selling one's children is not allowed. Buying them from third world countries is.

8.    Artists should take over the pornography industry. They will make all the props and scenery as well as shoot and edit the videotape. Performance is optional. All videotapes or DVD disks must be priced over $5,000 and only sold to serious art collectors.

9.    All paintings must bear a date prior to 2000 (backdating is allowed). All abstract paintings must be titled with a reference to a religious figure performing some bodily function, and have some animal excreta among its mediums. All artworks that depict people must show them degraded, abject, be titled provocatively or contain animal excreta.

10.    Finally, let's resolve that all artworks in the 21st century become virtual. We shouldn't have to leave the comfort of our homes to see art. If an artwork can't be reduced to pixels and seen on the Internet, it should be called "craft."


DENNIS KARDON is a New York painter.