The Rise of the "Crypto-Relic"

New Hoover Convertible (Jeff Koons, l980)

In a piece entitled “Traces of the Holy: The contemporary art work as ‘crypto-relic’” (TLS, 4/10/15), Matthew Bown makes the following comment, “The art market today is a market in crypto-relics, no more, no less. The dithyrambs of the experts—as when the director of the Tate art museums, Sir Nicholas Serota describes art objects as ‘symbols of optimism and renewal,’ as ‘objects of beauty and contemplation,’ or as ‘transgressive,’ 'raw and tender, brazen and subtle’—recreate the alluring discourse, the promise of miraculous potential, that sustained the original Christian relics in the public imagination.” How better to describe Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” the famed shark immersed in formaldehyde or Jeff Koons’ “New Hoover Convertibles” which might be subtitled “what you see is what you get.” Duchamp’s “Fountain,” with its R. Mutt signature, might as well have been a Kohler or Toto as it canonized the found object. But artists like Hirst and Koons have actually gone much further, in that the high demand almost requires an  iconography. Religiosity always had something in common with romanticism to the extent it was predicated on a belief in the unseen. What would the Shroud of Turin be without a higher love? The absence of value and/or meaning acts like a vacuum that creates the significance of Brown’s "crypto-relics." Everyone reads meaning into Chance, the main character of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There. But Chance is just an idiot savant, a tabula rasa on which others paint their wishes for transcendence. And “so it goes” as Vonnegut famously says in Slaughterhouse-Five. Those who don’t keep the faith will say that the public is being Tartuffed.

Being Where?

Times writer Ben Ratliff quotes the subject of a recent obit he wrote (“Kim Fowley, Rock Producer and Svengali, Dies at 75,” NYT, 1/19/15) thusly, “I’m so empty that I don’t have distractions. If somebody has substance or has developed something, I have the time for them.” It’s rare that human beings develop this level of perspicacity about themselves, particularly when the insight they are making refers to the absence rather than a presence of characterological attributes. Fowley was involved with legends like John Lennon and Alan Freed and such groups as The Runaways, the Byrds and the Mothers of Invention. Of course, his self appraisal, which would also have made a wonderful epitaph for a tombstone were it put in the third person, could be taken simply as a description of being “cool.” “Cool" was an affect so ubiquitous in the music business, particularly in 60’s and 70’s, it could almost be the subject of parody. But Fowley’s Zen like description of himself also resembles the main character of Jerzy Kosinksi’s Being There, played by Peter Sellers in the Hal Ashby adaptation of the book. Chance was a tabula rasa on which others painted their wishes and desires. When you think about it such selflessness whether intentional or inadvertent is a marvelously unexpected persona for a promoter—no matter how laid back or cool the come on. The music world has produced many unique personalities and the songs they created are often descriptions of a philosophy or world view. Fowley who had both song writing and production credentials apparently stood out even amongst this colorful and eccentric crew. It probably didn’t hurt either that according to the obit, “He was 6-foot-5, narrow-hipped, square jawed with a dead-eyed stare, perverse and well-spoken, often in makeup or face-paint." In the piece Ratliff also quotes Fowley as saying, “I became an actor in life. I used theatrical illusion to reinvent myself for whoever I was trying to get something from, whether it be an audience, a band or a song.”