DISPUTATIONS ON ART, ANARCHY AND ASSHOLISM: STEWART HOME AND "FRIENDS"

"In Mad For It! Bank and the New British Art (everything 18), Roberts writes: ‘The truth is, playing dumb, shouting "ARSE" and taking your knickers down has become an attractive move in the face of the professional institutionalisation of critical theory in art... it would be mistake to identify the new art and it’s fuck-you attitudinising with anything so simple-minded as the "depoliticisation" of art...’ Having said this, Roberts should not be surprised that some of those his ‘theorising’ configures as ‘philistines’, choose to blur the boundaries between ‘artist’ and ‘critic’, ‘novelist’ and ‘prankster’ etc. This ‘new breed’ of ‘philistine’ is not simply the lobotomised creature caricatured in Bank’s Zombie Golf, it is also a Frankenstein’s monster. Rather than simply screaming "ARSE" and taking its own knickers down, the ‘philistine’ is also capable of shouting "ARSEHOLE" while debagging those who perhaps imagine that they stand in ‘judgement’ over ‘art’. "

Arch wind-up merchant Stewart Home strikes again and this time the principle victim is the Camerawork supremo and Frankfurt School groupie John ‘Porno’ Roberts, a man whose belief in Art rivals the extremes to which the Inquisition took belief in God. ‘Porno’ Roberts gets his knickers in a right twist as his attempt at ‘reinventing’ Adorno is revealed as no more than a low-grade restatement of that old elitist chestnut about ‘the critical autonomy of art’. The humiliation of ‘Porno’ Roberts is supplemented with further jests at the expense of Larry O’Hara, Michel Prigent and others. A must read for fans of sectarianism, and indeed anybody who doubts Hegel’s observation that satire dissolves character. Comic stuff.

Art/Politics/Philosophy/Humour
ISBN 0 9514417 5 2
Sabotage Editions
Out of print, try a library or used book service like Abe if you need a hard copy; the entire pamphlet is available in electronic form on this site, just follow the links at the bottom of each page (starting with this one) that appear after the work 'Next'.

Disputations On Art, Anarchy & Assholism by Stewart Home and "Friends".
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset and designed by Salamander Press (London) Ltd.
Copyleft fairly used in accord with the Berne, Baby, Berne Convention 1919. Moral rights are for hypocrites.
Published in 1997 by Sabotage Editions BM Senior, London WC1N 3XX, UK.
ISBN 0 9514417 5 2
Printed in "Great" "Britain".

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