Emily (@the_aiju): funny that duchamp's fountain is considered "modern" art when it feels more post-modern than anything
truly modern art would be like "we've reduced the 'artness' of something to a mathematically evaluable function and we can now make the perfect art from first principles"
anyway, so, the traditionalists want you to believe that 'art' exists as some ideal in the platonic realm and that it can be approximated by greek statues and neoclassical paintings, and they get mad at everyone who disagrees
the post-modernists are calling b.s. on that and tell you that art is socially constructed and thus, a banana taped to a wall is art just as much as any marble statue
and as a meta-modernist i'm here to tell you that they're both extremely wrong in their own way. like YES the definition of art is entirely socially constructed. but we can construct it to be powerful and beautiful and meaningful BEYOND tribalism and preference falsification
it's like a world where traditional foodists will tell you that only coq au vin and beef bourguignon are real food and if you like sushi or pho you are a degenerate and the reason why society is falling apart
and then post-modernists step in and are like "see, sushi is just as much food as coq au vin, therefore food is entirely socially constructed" and then they proceed to eat cardboard and if you don't like eating cardboard you're a fascist
if you ask them how cardboard could be food they get mad and tell you that taste is entirely subjective and in fact they enjoy eating this cardboard because it's a clever satire of the gastronomical-industrial complex and the capitalist alienation process
and as someone who likes eating food and doesn't get hung up on the politics of it this entire discussion is just beyond insane
anyway the good news is that none of this matters and that while the galleries have only cardboard, art is not dead, it's still beautiful and alive, truly democratised on the internet
/ht @BillSeitz