When I go to an art museum, I want to see the craziest shit they can throw at me. I like looking at the old paintings and seeing the layers of paint and admiring the talent that went into it, but throw something titled Red #2 or Untitled and shit is about to get real. I want to have to figure out if there is actually art there or not. I want to look at the goddamn wall and think it's art and have the curator tell me that it's just a wall. I want the curator to tell me a dick joke and then tell me it's part of an art exhibit. I want to eat pasta and look at paintings of absolutely nothing.
I am not doing a bit. But I do think perhaps we're talking across purposes with the term 'art world', as I don't disagree with most of what you say either. By "art world" I just mean all of art and the culture around it, rather than the very small subset that gets put on a pedestal or primarily caters to the bourgeois. My partner is also an artist so I've also heard her analysis on it plenty.
I'm not sure what came across as ungenuine about ye ol' soup cans, I was just trying to share a genuine experience.
Ohhh gotcha, totally agree then. "World of art" vs "Art World(tm)" I guess lol. Yeah, definitely agree that there's a lot of great stuff out in the world of art if you're looking beyond the highly curated fancy galleries and museums and stuff. One of my favorites was a gallery that was set up in an old warehouse in New Orleans far from the touristy areas, iirc it was curated by some local graffiti artists and had a bunch of really cool pieces in it — a lot of it dealt with the Katrina aftermath, acab, and racial justice and the pieces were rad as hell. Lots of bright colors and cartoony styles with heavy street art influence. There was an installation piece that was someone's living room displaying the water level that it got to when the levees broke, that one really stuck with me even though this was a decade ago. Like, is a living room art? Yeah, it definitely can be.
I missed an operative word in your comment and thought you were talking about Warhol's soup cans instead of, yknow, literally any other pop art. Sorry comrade!
Heck yeah, once again I mostly agree, and I'm already envious of you getting to see those things. No worries!