So this motherfucker from American Idol
Sanjaya Malakar. This this cat's got some
killer hair. That shit is tight!
Apparently this dude invented the "Ponyhawk,"
a mohawk-ponytail hybrid, shits' genius,
That shit is genius! Art History 101.
So it's 1912 right? Duchamp gets his
freak on, tunes up his formal chops and
busts out "Nude Descending A Staircase #2"
right? But this dude still feels
hollow inside. He's got cats on his left
like Picasso doing "Violin and Grapes."
Look everybody knows in 1912 Picasso was
not fuckin' around! You gonna step to that,
you're gunna get your dome peeled quick!
Everyone around him is a stone-cold assassin with
the paintbrush. He sees that shit as
facile! See, I'm thinking that shits'
bumming him out, yo! Now by all accounts
Duchamp is a mad Brainiac, right? So he
goes back to the lab. Homie grinds hard
on the thinking tip, because he's mad
smart. And wants to use some asymmetrical warfare
type shit to win the Art Game, right?
He thinks it through good. And then that
shit strikes him like a bolt of
lightning, Pow!
It's just like in that movie Wargames
with Matthew Broderick. But he can't know
that. Duchamp can't know that shit.
Because it's 1912 and Matthew Broderick
hasn't been born, there ain't no nuclear
weapons and supercomputers yet. But still,
the way I figure it's exactly like the
denouement of that movie Wargames. It
hasn't learned. Is there a way to make it
it play itself?
Yes, number of players 0.
 
Seven! Eight! Must be caught in a loop!
It's drawing more and more 
power from the rest of the system!
Nine numbers! Ten! He's got the code It's going to launch!
General,
Colonel Conway call SAC, get me a launch status report.
Major Day get me the President.
ok
 
What's it doing? It's learning!
Greetings professor Falkan.
Hello Joshua.
Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
They both run simulation after simulation,
trying to outfox the enemy. In Wargames
it's the doctrine of mutually assured
destruction. For Duchamp it's the legacy
of Michelangelo, Titian, Picasso and all
the other artists he sees as nothing
more than brush-monkeys. It's brilliant man!
it's brilliant. Both Joshua and the
supercomputer arrive at the same
conclusion. After mercilessly grinding
through simulation after simulation he
finally draws a conclusion and in his
synthetic voice he declares "A strange
game. The only winning move, is not to
play." And see Duchamp, just like Joshua
realizes he's got some weapons, he's got
an arsenal man. Look, he's got some chops
with the brush, but he can't fuck with Picasso
or Michelangelo, or Titian or Tintoretto
and 'cause Duchamp was a fucking baller he
says "Fuck that shit!" and repositions
Art around the conceptual, and away from
the technical arms race through his
Ready-mades and he goes on some
asymmetrical warfare type shit to win
the art game.
Marcel throw some murals and old bike
parts into an exhibition, and in this simple
move disrupts centuries of thinking
about what the artists' role is and what the
nature of the art object is. Look this
shit was straight badass. By throwing
some old bike parts and a urinal in an
exhibition he straight "sons" Picasso. "S'up Son?!"
See the fact is, Holmes straight "sonned" Picasso and
his toadie Braque and centuries of technicians
with this one simple move. Checkmate!
Checkmate son! So by my math, this along
with some other crap gives us 105
years of the primacy of
conceptual... of the conceptual in art.
Well, we ain't in Kansas anymore son.
And it aint 1912. It's fucking 2017 and we
live in the future. And i'ma tell you,
i'ma tell you now about Duchamp's bitter harvest.
I'ma tell you what he has wrought.
And how we need to recoil. How we need to
reclaim that shit. See here's where we
loop back to the beginning of our
story to Sanjaya Malakar. See that shit
got tired because the Confederacy of
Dunces took the ball and run with it.
It's time the pendulum swung back kid.
Fuck dawg!
Spend five minutes in any graduate art
program a planet Earth, gallery, museum or
contemporary art collection. Then you'll
see more motherfucking "deskilled" objects
that you can shake a stick at Holmes.
What's this mean?
Well our man Benjamin Buchloh defines
de-skilling as the persistent effort to
eliminate artisanal competence and other
forms of manual virtuosity from the
horizon of both artist competence and
aesthetic valuation. In simple english,
this means people painting like shit and
shamelessly making terrible objects yo.
Fools are making straight garbage trying
to play that shit off as conceptual
because they don't have the skill and
they have no discipline.
Now you may think that I'm blaming all
this shit on Duchamp. I'm not. I come to
fucking bury Caesar not to praise Him!  We
live in a post-fact, post-quality,  post-criteria
culture governed by Trumpian
logic. It's sippy-cups and snowflakes
everywhere. With nearly everyone, not all
but nearly everyone, hiding the garbage
that they present as moving contemporary
art behind the notion that skill,  that
technique, that discipline, that craft are
passé and un-conceptual. Well, that's
some fucking bullshit. The  unfortunate truth
for the Arts is that we could give two
fucks. Postmodernity, information
technology and the echo chamber of the
internet have made all things possible and
in the process laid waste to our ability
to call "bullshit," establish criteria
and to discern. The simple fact remains
that our culture is not obsessed with
mastery. Look at Sanjaya Malakar and
fucking American Idol and you go ahead
and Google the Unmonumental art
exhibition at the Walker Art Center and
feast your eyes on what conceptualism
has wrought. In this Trumpian universe
we've lost the capacity to say...
"This is bullshit!"
