The finger points to the moon and the fool looks at the finger.

What does every aspiring surfer, writer, film director, baseball player and rock musician have that aspiring young artists seem to be without? A hero. How is it that whenever you see or read an interview with a rock band or young film director they will spend much of the time extolling the virtues of older practitioners of their respective crafts and cite examples of life changing moments involving particular works? Yet, this is not true of today's young visual artists.

Today's young artists arrive in art school with not so much as inkling of who did what, when or why. Not only did they NOT spend hours pouring over the work of their beloved favorite artist, it's very likely that they can't even name more than ten so-called famous artists of any century, any where.

I was talking about this with a friend recently and he pointed out that perhaps graffitist were an exception. While I have no real firsthand proof, I'm inclined to believe him. Graffiti is a realm of it's own. A self-evaluated subculture of like minded yet competitive individuals who grow up striving for some form of higher quality. My guess is that these young people see work that they admire and proceed to develop their own way of working. No one butts in and starts telling the taggers who is more valuable than whom. If you're not doing Graffiti then it's fairly unlikely that your opinion of their work matters in the least. Linking this activity with the Art industry is unfair to Graffiti.

If you were to attempt some sort of critical examination of Graffiti..(I almost said Gaffiti Art which would be a confusing devaluation of this activity) you would no doubt find a tagger and begin the long process of figuring out why some graffiti is more admired than other graffiti. The more taggers you spoke with, the wider your understanding of the particular value set that determines the ethic of good graffiti.

Just let me say that this process is what I believe happed at the very beginning of what we call modern art criticism. Some artist told somebody about the value set and ethic of painting or sculpture at that time. This was inside information that was only available from artists themselves. These artists already knew what was admirable art and what wasn't. Connoisseurs of painting spent years trying to gain the insight that many painters took for granted by the time they finished their training. The only way that an accurate understanding of any art form can be grasped by a non-practitioner is by having a practitioner spell it out for them. All of the evaluative information understood by a critic, came originally from the artists.

It could be argued that it is possible to deconstruct a particular piece of art without recourse to the artist or the background within which it was created. You can do that, but you shouldn't. Imagine watching a group of surfers and then developing a critique based on some form of deconstruction of a certain surfer's movements. Would you conclude that they are an index of bourgeois rebellion or icons of male mating behavior. Whatever you concluded, you would be looking at surfing all wrong.

At the beginning I mentioned the hero and how most art-forms generate them and they in turn inspire young talent. Why doesn't this process happen in the wider world of "visual art"? It's not happening today because even though everybody would love to live the Art Lifestyle, no one really looks at art. It's not something you spectate for fun. No one really gets any pleasure out of it, unless they think that the art is becoming more valuable and they stand to profit. In a few instances there is some pleasure derived from knowing the value of the art as a rare object or occasionally pleasure is derived politically. That is to say the message of the art is loud enough so that everyone in the room has to acknowledge it's message. If you support the message, then you are happy.

Beyond that, there is little pleasure to be derived from today's art. In the long gone days of yore, there were connoisseurs. Today we can scoff, but at one time, these individuals derived real pleasure from art. They savored it at every chance and many where very well informed. Artists often befriended them and they became more informed. Some of these individuals eventually became correspondents for daily newspapers. They shared their discoveries with regular people. Much the way a restaurant critic goes out for a meal, then evaluates it for John Q. Public. The meal is not deconstructed beyond categorizing it as , say, Hungarian and expensive. After that, the evaluation is on terms of pleasure for value. If you like goulash, this is the place. Perhaps even a suggestion that you order a certain dish to experience the subtle flavors of a certain spice. The food critic probably knows chiefs. And he knows connoisseurs, like himself, that challenge his palette to new taste experiences. The whole notion now sounds deliciously dated.

Some of these connoisseurs could afford to collect and they did. Not because it was a sure sign of their "now-ness", but because they loved the art and had the time and money to enjoy it. (I admit that even now as I write this, a pang of guilt is coming over me. It's elitist and hopelessly bourgeois to even mention such things.) These connoisseurs were about as politically un-hip or incorrect as you can get. They were in almost every instance white, well-to-do and Euro-centric. Let's face it, not the kind of person you would want your kid to become. No street cred, no cool, just some kind of lame snob that loved art...and embraced the value set and ethic of the artists who made it; without, I might add, without the mediation of museum curators, gallerist, magazine articles and advertisements.The idea of a connoisseurs today seems as out of date as ladies maids and bootblacks. I am aware that there are numerous collectors these days. But collectors create collections, connoisseurs actually appreciate the individual objects in and of themselves.

The fact of the matter is that the modern Art Industry just doesn't produce enough connoisseur-worthy objects any more. And, let's face it, the culture that had for centuries created the demand for connoisseur-worthy art objects has largely disappeared. Corporations, which have replaced the nobility as the ruling class of the day, have no need, nor the time, to impress folks with connoisseur-worthy art works. Since there are no longer any individuals of importance around that could appreciate art objects at the connoisseur level, why make or acquire them? Instead they have large collections managed by professional curators whose job more closely resembles a stock portfolio manager. Few if any of these individuals are connoisseurs. They are collection managers. They understand the value of objects but not necessarily the values of the artists that created them.

The Art Industry has begun to believe it's own PR. How many times in the last two decades have you heard just how important art is? Apparently, art is like fiber in our food, something we all need but no one is that interested in eating.

Art is huge. The Art Industry is so big now that nothing can be done about it. Despite the fact that the number of post-graduate degrees in Art has ballooned beyond all recognition, you don't need a degree or any education or license to buy and sell Art. Nevertheless, the Art Industry now employs thousands of people in art-like activities. All of whom consider themselves more qualified to judge art than the artists themselves. And artists have just caved in and turned everything over to the Art Industry people. Why? For a very un-fulfillable promise of "Fame".

What we are left with is an activity that young people find they might have a talent for but don't have any real interest in. Hence, the irony factor...you know, "I want to be famous for doing something that nobody's interested in or really understands...including me!" How sad is that?

WALWORTH