Sunday, February 20, 2005

No more urinals

"21st Century Art Makes Its Escape From the Toilet," proclaims a wonderful piece by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal. Henninger writes:
It is time for both Modernism and Post-Modernism to go away. The 20th century is over. We don't need it anymore. We don't want it anymore.

What we need is an art, a culture, an aesthetic appropriate to the age in which we live--the 21st century, the Age of the Digital and the Age of September 11. Modern art isn't it.

The "urinal" in the title of this post, and the "toilet" of Henninger's, is, of course, Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain," that icon of modernism. The "cultural signifier" of our age, writes Henninger, might well be the iPod.

On a related note, though it's not quite about art, here's another piece I enjoyed immensely when I first read it: "Postmodernism Disrobed" by Richard Dawkins.

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