Be Original

The Poem

Here is everything you need to make important art:

Bold horizontal bands of saturated color —the kind that reads from across a gallery,from across a living room,from across an auction catalogon a glass coffee tablein a house you will never visit.Check.

A crown.Someone put it there first.Now everyone knows what it meanswhich means it means that you know what it means.Check.

Andre is on the wall.He has been on every wall since 1989.OBEY beneath himlike a question disguised as a commanddisguised as a branddisguised as a question again.The loop is the art.The loop was always the art.Check.

Post No Bills —posted everywhere,which was always the joke,which stopped being subversivesometime around the third Urban Outfittersthat sold it on a tote bag.Check.

The superhero.The comic panel.The primary colors of a childhoodthe market has decided is worthapproximately this much per square foot.Check.

Banksy’s rat.Banksy’s girl.Banksy’s comment on Banksy.The artist who built a career on disappearingand has never been more present.Check.

Warhol’s repetition —the same image printed slightly differentlyuntil the difference becomes the meaningand the meaning becomes the priceand the price becomes the image.Check.

Imposter Soup

All of it borrowed.All of it recombined.All of it hanging in a gallerynext to a price listnext to a statement about authenticitynext to a collector who owns three othersby the same artist who borrowed from the same sourceswho borrowed from the same sourceswho borrowed —this is called a lineage.This is called a conversation.This is called contemporary artand it is and it isn’tand that’s the pointand always was.

And in the middle of all of it —a surfer.A portal.One man alone in the waterlooking up at something realthat opened in the skyand has not closed.Not a reference.Not a device.Not a check on anyone’s list.Just true.The one thing in the compositionthat arrived before the market had a name for it.

Just true

BE Original.
They put it on everything.
He already was.