Who is responsible for ugliness? What is ugly? The question, if raised by a salesmen of beauty, is ugly. The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea; art as entertainment is an ugly activity. Painting as a profession of pleasing and selling is an ugly business. Art dealing, art collecting, art manipulating, art jobbing are ugly.
Art as means of livelihood, as a means of living it up, is ugly. The expression "an artist has to eat" is ugly. An artist does not have to eat any more than anyone else.
Ecomomic relations in art are primitive and ugly. Commercialism, careerism, moneymaking in art is ugly.
Artists once led less ugly lives than other men. Today artists lead the same kind of life as other men. The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist. The image of the artist as a patronized idiot, as an innocent, as a company man, as a collector's item, a successful schnook, is ugly. Knowing on which side one's bread is buttered in art is ugly. Bumpkin Dionysianism or Dionysian bumpkinism is ugly. The artist as a natural animal, vegetable, or grass root, is ugly. Primitivism, irrationalism, anti-intellectualism in art are ugly. Surrealism and expressionism in art are ugly.
A cult of the ugly is a romantic, rococo, naturalist art idea. Anti-art as pro-life is ugly. Collage, assemblage, junk, and brute art are ugly. Ugly geometric art is uglier than expressionist art. The mixture or integration of the separate and different arts are ugly.
Poetic, musical, sculptural, and mural painting are ugly. Imaginative, visionary, original, natural art is ugly. Making a graven image or any manner of likeness is ugly and an abomination of Satan's work.
Art confused with life, nature, society, politics, religion is ugly. Art as a thing used for some other end is ugly. Absence of government sponsorship is even uglier. Art in industry is as ugly as industry in art.
The tricks of the art trade are ugly.
The ugliest exhibitions of art in America in recent years were the "New Images of Man' show in the Museum of Modern Art and the "Nature in Abstraction" and "Geometric Absraction" shows at the Whitney Museum. Museum art marketing, art promotion, art-history manufacturing are ugly.
Art as a good thing or a sure thing is ugly. The age of accommodation in art is ugly. The age of the shrug in art is ugly. Signs of affluence in art are ugly, signs of poverty in art are ugly. An ugly customer is not an ugly duckling.
When things take an ugly turn in art there is the devil to pay. "Why fight it?" and "that's life" are ugly expressions. Profit, interest, property exploitation in art are ugly.
Consciencelessness and subconsciousness in art are ugly. Artists are responsible for ugliness.
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