17.2.06

Anti-Art can't also be Art

ArtInfo interview, 17 February 2006

João Ribas: You’ve been very critical of that line of British art, particularly its overemphasis on very sophisticated or conceptual things.

Billy Childish: Well, I don’t think it is sophisticated at all. The problem is it’s pseudo-sophisticated and it’s actually even pseudo-conceptual. There isn’t any concept other than calling something that isn’t art, art. Which Duchamp already did. And if anti-art is art, then what is anti-art?

[These artists] don’t understand [that people] already know that things look interesting. Anything you look at closely or in isolation is interesting and has a story. You don’t need artists to tell you that. It’s condescending, and adolescent, and glib and useless.

The problem with an art of ideas is that it’s highly limited. It’s showing intellect with very little intellect. So I have art without ideas. Which means you just use nature. Everything that’s there is available. Art is ruined by having too much art in it.

six artistic necessities

Gilbert Sorrentino listed his "artistic necessities" in his 1983 writing "Genetic Coding":

an obsessive concern with formal structure
a dislike of the replication of experience
a love of digression and embroidery
a great pleasure in false or ambiguous information
a desire to invent problems that only the invention of new forms can solve
a joy in making mountains out of molehills