by Alex Wells
I was having lunch with my friend Charles—who is 60something—and Hotel California came on. Like Jeffrey Lebowski, he hates the fuckin’ Eagles. Or he did. “I hated the Eagles when they came out,” he said “but now I think it’s ok. Kind of nice.”
I don’t think Charles has mellowed out at all—it was more that, at the time, it was probably so irritating that anyone would play The Eagles considering their other options. It was 1977, why would you want to swing in this musty old hammock while AC/DC, The Sex Pistols, Judas Priest, the Dead Boys, Iggy, the Clash, Ramones, and The Jam were all releasing essential early albums and Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Bowie and Queen were at the peak of their powers?
50 years later, though, at lunch in a dead-empty diner on a beautifully slow Wednesday afternoon with the warm smell of falafel rising up from the air—why not?
This is how I hope I am going to feel, when I am truly old, about all these artists you people claim to like. I hope that my current sputtering outrage at the near-indecent levels of backsliding and nothingness that I keep seeing the art world call good—fades into a de-historicized appreciation of even lackluster things having some niche they need to fill.
Why are there still videos of nothing happening but this time in an ecological way? Why is this beaded cushion in the shape of lips? Jonas Wood? What the hell, man? Why would anyone be intentionally looking at this hollow rigidity now, while they could be looking at, say, Jingze Du?
Future me will be fine with these things, I tell myself. They are harmless. Money was made off a certain kind of wealthy collector, respect was earned from a certain species of thrift-store girl, a certain kind of home was brightened up. Art doesn’t have to be fresh or bracing. You like that schematic oil of a faceless man in chinless profile beneath printed stars because it’s red and fits over the mantel? Of course, why not? Why not paint a potted plant? This is all part of a well-ordered home. There’s plenty of room at the Hotel California.
Image:
Bromeliad Still Life, 2021, gouache, coloured pencil and graphite on paper. Courtesy Karma and Jonas Wood