Art World Pretence

A rather skeptical and cynical friend of mine (who is a self claimed artist's son) has a huge problem with the art world and its lack of accessibility to the everyman.  It's something he has always believed; however, there was one night last year in particular that exaserbated his feeligns on the matter. This was a private view at the White Cube for Christian Marclay's work The Clock whereby mate friend preceded to get very drunk and was refused entry, in light of this he preceded to call the Director "a pretentious c#%t" due to his rage that he wasnt allowed in. Here we see an obvious and probably very justified resistance to the LAD; however, the main focus here is some notion of  pretentiousness exerted by the art world.

I think despite my friends perhaps overtly hostile reaction to the justified reason to not let him in, there was perhaps something more sinister as the director would not let any of us in, it was especially disconcerting when he looked at the three sober members of the group (one of them being a relative of his) as if we were not fit to be allowed in due to our appearances. While LAD culture and behavior might not at times align itself with the "appropriate" nature of such events, it did highlight the the overtly snobbish attitude that is often held by the "art crowd". 

Much of the claims of pretentiousness relies on the continued attempts by many to live up to some form of stereotype as an art folk, this quite ironical as stereotypes are something that many artists try to critique. This does not mean that the LAD culture itself doesn't live up to some kind of stereotype; however, it never pretends it doesn't. The rise of the LAD culture does have some roots in the ironic behavior of guys laughing at actions that they previously laughed at, but now by making it ironic they have in fact become the LADs themselves. This last point is perhaps something that the art world could build upon, by this I mean making fun of the pretense that covers so much of its sphere, maybe trying to not dumb down, but laugh at its own ridiculous behavior. Art for everyone is a lovely idea; however, the commercial side of art excludes and reduces the possibility of this happening.