The March 2009 edition of The Art Newspaper reported that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), is funding the building of a monumental sculpture by postmodernist artist Jeff Koons - at a cost of $25 million. Titled Train, the “sculpture” consists of an actual 70-foot long steam locomotive hung from an immense 161-foot construction crane. If the project actually proceeds, it will become, in the words of The Art Newspaper - “the most expensive artwork ever commissioned by a museum.” It should be restated once again that President Obama’s economic stimulus bill contains $50 million to service the needs of art institutions for the entire United States of America.

In my April 2007 article, Jeff Koons: The Schlock of the New, I detailed the collaboration between LACMA and Koons when it was merely at its formative stage. At the time, the Annenberg Foundation provided LACMA and Koons with funds for engineering studies concerning the feasibility of such an edifice. As it turns out, The Art Newspaper reported; “LACMA has already spent about $1.75 of $2 million pledged by trustee Wallis Annenberg for preliminary studies.” In my ‘07 article I wrote:

“Those who attempt to find anything meaningful in Koons’ productions should simply remember the following admonition from him, ‘A viewer might at first see irony in my work… but I see none at all. Irony causes too much critical contemplation.’ There you have it, the perfect art for 21st century America - it won’t make you think!

(….) Koons supposedly represents the ‘best and brightest’ from the national cultural scene - a sad ‘fact’ I find utterly disheartening and unacceptable. That LACMA can reward this cipher with a high-profile commission and a place in art history does not bode well for any of us. Robert Pincus-Witten, director of exhibitions at C&M Arts, put it this way; ‘Jeff recognizes that works of art in a capitalist culture inevitably are reduced to the condition of commodity. What Jeff did was say, ‘Let’s short-circuit the process. Let’s begin with the commodity.’”

In other words - to hell with art, let’s make money.

Modern art enthusiast and critic, Waldemar Januszczak, wrote an article for the TimesOnline of the U.K., in which he describes his waning love affair with postmodern art. He was specifically writing of the U.K’s conceptual Young British Artists and the Tate Modern, but his words can just as easily apply to LACMA, Koons, and postmodern art in general. Significantly, Januszczak took great pains in his article to describe himself as a booster of contemporary art, writing that “it’s been my life, my career, my sustenance” and that when he offers a critique - “you can be confident it’s serious.” Januszczak wrote:

“What we have here today is a situation that parallels events in France in the 1860s, when the Paris salon became too powerful and the impressionist revolt needed to happen to revive art. The Tate is the salon of today: pompous, arrogant, all-powerful and utterly convinced of its superiority. What began as a force for progress and coherence has turned into a cultural despot that has the government’s ear.

(….) Just as the Paris salon favoured the conceptual over the actual - pretentious history painting over vivid snapshots of everyday life - so the Tate supports art that imagines it is on a higher plane than the everyday.”

It is entirely appropriate for Januszczak to compare today’s postmodern art elites with the entrenched French Academy of the 1860s and its attempts to suppress Impressionism. But LACMA’s patronage of Koons reminds one not so much of the French Salon as it does the insensitivity and pitilessness of France’s Ancien Régime just before it was overthrown by the revolution of 1789. At the same time as American museums layoff staff and cancel exhibits, as galleries go out of business and artists struggle to stay alive, while millions across America lose their jobs, homes, or both - LACMA fritters away tens of millions on what can only be seen as a monument to triviality. How many thousands of artists could LACMA commission with $25 million? How many art workshops could it subsidize in underserved communities? Let them eat cake indeed.

On March 4, 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts released the results of its research on artist unemployment rates, a report that concludes joblessness is not only skyrocketing for artists, but that the artist workforce has “contracted” and that “artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers.” The NEA found that in the fourth quarter of 2008, some 129,000 artists were unemployed nationally, a 63% increase from the previous year. While the NEA report did not give a state-by-state breakdown on unemployment rates for artists, a previous NEA study found that more artists live in California than in any other state of the union (some 140,620 working artists), even ranking above New York, which came in fourth. It is therefore not unreasonable to surmise that there are huge numbers of artists now unemployed in the state of California.

According to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, California is presently last when it comes to contributing to arts funding. The national average for state arts funding comes to $1.35 per capita - but California’s funding for the arts comes to a trifling 15 cents per citizen each year. The California Arts Council (CAC) is the state’s arts policy-setting agency, administering grant programs and directly supporting arts programs for all of the state’s citizens. It has a budget of only $5.6 million to administrate cultural affairs for the entire state of California.

A February 28, 2009 article by the Los Angeles Times reported that the unemployment rate for workers in the state of California has reached 10.1%, the state’s highest jobless rate in twenty-six years. Statistics from the Employment Development Department of the State of California show that as of January of this year, 1,954,900 Californians are out of work, with 537,000 now jobless in Los Angeles. Those are the official statistics, but how many Californians are underemployed or have simply given up looking for employment? The aforementioned Los Angeles Times piece quoted one economist as saying, “California is hemorrhaging faster than the U.S. economy.”

In light of these facts, a price-tag of $25 million for the LACMA-Koons Train boondoggle verges upon lunacy, and it most assuredly is an indication of an arts institution profoundly out of touch with the realities lived by the vast majority of the working population of California and the nation. I should reiterate here that the base salary of LACMA director Michael Govan is $600,000 while the total annual compensation for a sitting president of the United States is $400,000.

Arts professionals have some soul searching to do. It is transparently obvious why a greater part of the U.S. population feels alienated from and at variance with contemporary art. In short the public’s gut reaction that art has nothing to do with them and that it is only for the privileged few, is in fact an astute observation based upon the circumstances before us. It is high time that American artists begin to create the new works and institutions that will help free the public of such an erroneous opinion.

Los Angeles’ flagship museum dedicated to modern art of the last fifty years may cease to exist. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), has been incapacitated by a crushing financial crisis of its own making. On November 19, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that “The museum has burned through $20 million in unrestricted funds and borrowed $7.5 million from other accounts. Cash from donors is being sought. A merger has not been ruled out.”

It appears that MOCA Director Jeremy Strick and the museum trustees are guilty of a total failure of leadership - not to mention the gross mismanagement of the world famous museum. As a nonprofit institution, MOCA collects little government funding and instead relies on donors for some 80% of its expenses. By checking the GuideStar website, which keeps track of nonprofits and their donors, it has come to light that Strick has a salary of $500,000. Readers should be reminded that the annual compensation of the president of the United States is $400,000. Strick also pays at least five higher-ranking MOCA employees six figure salaries. Furthermore, the Board of MOCA loaned Strick over $500,000 for the purchase of a house - all at a time when the museum is tottering on total financial collapse.

In his Open letter to MOCA’s board of trustees, L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight puts the blame for MOCA’s crisis squarely upon Director Jeremy Strick as well as the museum’s trustees; “As trustees your first responsibility is fiduciary, and in that you have been a flop”. Knight went on to disparage the supposed “rescue plans” being considered to save the museum as “shameful”. The irate art critic made the following comments about the proposed rescue strategies:

“One would rent your incomparable painting and sculpture collection to a local foundation - controlled by one of your own trustees! - in exchange for some sort of multimillion-dollar annuity. The other would be a flat-out sale of it to another museum, so that you might shift the fundraising burden elsewhere, take the revenue and continue as an exhibition-only venue.

Yes, we live in a market economy, where art is bought and sold; but one of the glories of an art museum is that it provides refuge from the crude commercial world. When art enters a museum’s permanent collection, it leaves the marketplace behind. That your first instinct is apparently scheming to monetize your extraordinary collection shows that you are not trustees, you are art dealers in disguise.

The third plan I’ve been told about is even worse - total Armageddon. A merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in which the collection and selected staff would move to the Mid-Wilshire campus and the downtown facilities would close, would mean MOCA would cease to exist. You seem to be willing to allow your own institution, one whose remarkable program and astounding collection are the envy of cities around the world, to simply disappear. Dumbfounding.”

Apparently the Armageddon option has been selected. On the Los Angeles Times arts blog, Knight stated; “(….) here is what I’m told the board is now prepared to do: formally approach the Los Angeles County Museum of Art about a merger, which will effectively mean a transfer of MOCA’s extraordinary collection to the Mid-Wilshire complex.”

To be honest, I have never been enamored of MOCA. True enough, it houses notable works from the likes of Arshile Gorky, Robert Rauscheberg, Jackson Pollock, and others; and in 2003 it did present a wonderful retrospective of paintings by Lucian Freud. But as of late MOCA has advanced pointless and vacuous works that tell us nothing about the human condition, witness the loathsome Takashi Murakami. To survive as a viable institution, which seems doubtful at this point, MOCA’s continued existence depends on more than just massive infusions of capital - it requires a new vision. That being said, I take no particular delight in seeing one of the major art museums of my city going to ruin.

MOCA’s dilemma is indicative of the crisis now rippling through the world of elite art institutions, a disaster that will only intensify as late capitalism careens into worldwide depression. But the problem is much more than just financial, it is one of art and culture having reached an aesthetic and political impasse. Breaking through that dead-end to reach the transformative and liberating will be necessary if the crisis in contemporary art is to be resolved.

UPDATES:
Dec. 23, 2008. In its article, MOCA accepts Broad’s lifeline, the Los Angeles Times reports that MOCA has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offered by billionaire Eli Broad (whose name rhymes with “load”). Additionally, MOCA’s director Jeremy Strick has resigned and the ailing museum has appointed UCLA Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young as its CEO. Acceptance of the Broad offer ends speculation that MOCA might merge with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Bloomberg.com reports that in a Dec. 23 joint statement made by MOCA and the Broad foundation, Mr. Broad said; “It is in the best interest of the city for MOCA to remain independent.” There is more irony to be found in that remark than in all of the postmodern art found in MOCA’s collection. In 2007 Broad was ranked by FORBES as number 42 on its list of 400 richest Americans - with an estimated net worth of over $5.8 billion. He is also the founding chairman of MOCA, and his bailout of the institution should be seen in that context. Broad is also chair of the Los Angeles Grand Avenue Authority, which plans a $1.8 billion “improvement” of the downtown area where MOCA is located.

Nov. 21, 2008. A spokeswoman for MOCA released the following statement: “MOCA has received a letter from the California attorney general’s office. The California attorney general has broad jurisdiction and oversight over California nonprofits, including MOCA. The letter requested information and documents related to the museum’s finances. MOCA is fully cooperating with the attorney general.” So far the office of the attorney general has not commented on its investigation of the museum.

In a major trial that challenged an artist’s right to free expression, the British artist Michael Dickinson, who lives in Turkey, was prosecuted by the Turkish government in 2006 for creating a photo-collage seen as “insulting the dignity of the prime minister”. Dickinson faced years in prison for his artwork, but on September 25, 2008, the judge in the case dropped all criminal charges against him.

In part Dickinson’s release was secured by global protests initiated by artists. A member of the Stuckist International - the “art movement for contemporary figurative painting with ideas”, Dickinson received immediate backing from Stuckism’s London headquarters. Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists, wrote a widely publicized letter to the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in which Thomson stated: “It is intolerable that a country applying for European Union membership should censor freedom of political comment in this way. I trust you will communicate your strongest condemnation and ask for this case to be abandoned immediately.” Thomson also sent a similar letter to the current British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

But Michael Dickinson’s predicament was also noted by others. I followed Dickinson’s trial closely, and when Mark Givens, the editor-in-chief of MungBeing arts journal in Pomona, California, started a worldwide petition to call for the release of Dickinson - I became a signatory. In part, the petition stated:

“We, the undersigned, support an artist’s right of free expression. We stand firmly with Amnesty International in their calls on the Turkish authorities to terminate without delay all prosecutions against individuals under the notorious Article 301, and to abolish all other articles in the Turkish Penal Code that stifle and punish freedom of speech and expression. We call for the prosecution of Michael Dickinson over his political collages to be dropped.”

In Southern California’s Inland Empire Weekly, Kevin Ausmus’ article, Pomona editor helps keep British artist out of jail, summarizes the successful campaign waged by Givens to free Michael Dickinson. An except from that story reads:

“After hearing of Dickinson’s plight, Mark Givens of Pomona, editor-in-chief of MungBeing, decided it was necessary to start an online petition on the artist’s behalf. Now, Givens’ ‘tremendous support’ in publicizing the case is being credited for galvanizing the necessary publicity to tip the verdict in Dickinson’s favor (….) Though the petition gathered less than 600 signatures overall, those who did sign proved to be of high quality in the international art community, including Steve Bell, a British political cartoonist for the Guardian known for his controversial caricatures; Mark Vallen, a Los Angeles-based painter and activist; Noam Chomsky and several artists associated with the Turkish Freedom Movement.”

When facing the seemingly insurmountable problems of today’s world, it is not difficult to see why some surrender to hopelessness and indifference. However, it should not go without saying that our actions, or lack thereof - do make a difference; which has been amply demonstrated by the successful defense of Mr. Dickinson.

“One thing is certain. King Mob never wanted to find themselves here, in the house rag of cultural consumption, let alone locked away in Tate’s permanent collection. But these posters and magazines are just detritus, the record of past struggles. In the present day, the real action is elsewhere.” So writes author Hari Kunzru in The Mob Who Shouldn’t Really Be Here, an article for the Tate Britain publication, TATEetc., on the subject of a minuscule collective of English radicals from the 1960s who took their name from the 1780 Gordon Riots of London. During that long-ago uprising, London’s Newgate Prison was destroyed by the rampaging multitudes, and left on its walls was a daub that credited the destruction to “His Majesty King Mob.”

I need not recount the chronicles of King Mob as it reared its ugly little head during the turbulent 1960s, suffice it to say the rebel faction left its mark and Kunzru’s article recounts that history well enough, save for one bothersome fact. Kunzru wrote about the Mob as though it were a prehistoric fossil preserved in amber, when in fact some of its surviving cadre still publish hair-raising tirades designed to give elites apoplexy. But Kunzru was correct in noting that King Mob would have wanted absolutely nothing to do with a “cultural mausoleum” like the Tate, since the Mob was, and continues to be, opposed to art altogether - considering it “the commodity which helps sell all the others”. The question is not why King Mob railed against the grotesqueries of an “outrageous society” - but why Tate Britain thought it essential to include King Mob ephemera amongst its collection of Damien Hirsts and Tracey Emins.

An archive of King Mob’s subversive printed materials has recently been acquired by Tate Britain, and several anti-art collage works by the King Mob collective are now included in the Tate Britain’s Collage Montage Assemblage exhibit which began at the museum in July, 2008. This is indeed a conundrum, especially in light of the Mob’s unambiguous views regarding art as expressed in a recent statement from them:

“A master of irony and word play, would Duchamp have savoured the irony of seeing his Urinal hailed as the most important single contribution to the evolution of modern art by cultural pundits? Unfortunately he would most likely have been flattered. The ‘Urinal’ is now Tate Modern’s altar piece surrounded by a culturally beatified host of imitators.

One wonders what effect a gesture like smashing the urinal would have in the media, on decrepit youth and the avant garde (rather arriere garde) of the cultural establishment, especially if accompanied by a coherent explanation. We are almost tempted, but the thought of the ensuing court case, accusations of cultural vandalism equivalent to the burning of the books, even a prison sentence and certainly a crippling fine for having destroyed a priceless work of art when the aim of the original piece was to debunk any such pretensions, is enough to deter anyone.”

I understand King Mob’s observation that Duchamp’s ‘Urinal’ is nothing more than a urinal transformed into an “altar piece” by the Priests of Postmodernism, what I cannot understand is the Tate Britain embracing the Mob’s incendiary and volatile gesticulations as “art”. I suppose the Mob gets the last laugh by bringing some clarity to the situation when averring the following:

“Where anti-art as an essential part of a modern revolutionary critique was once proclaimed loudly, the simple realization that art is nothing but a consumer appendage or that popular culture is now inseparable from advertising in an utterly commoditized social life far more dire than in the late 1960s - has again been reaffirmed.”

As the world burns and international financial institutions fall like so many dominoes, impulsive oligarchs and imprudent investment bankers continue to put their money into the overheated contemporary art “market.” At a two-day Sotheby’s London auction of works by postmodernist Damien Hirst, the artist made a whopping $169 million before the auction even closed. Among the masterpieces snatched-up; The Kingdom, a tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde ($17.2 million), and The Golden Calf, an embalmed calf with hooves and horns of 18-carat gold, also encased in a tank of formaldehyde ($18.6 million). Hirst, who did not attend the auction but monitored sales from his home, brashly stated: “I love art, and this proves I’m not alone and the future looks great for everyone.”

While it is easy to carp about the debauchery of the elite art world, it takes considerable effort to understand how the enjoyment of art has been substituted with the worship of celebrity artists and an effusive fawning over their ridiculously excessive prices. The esteemed art critic Robert Hughes said the following about Damien Hirst in an article published in the U.K. Guardian:

“Actually, the presence of a Hirst in a collection is a sure sign of dullness of taste. What serious person could want those collages of dead butterflies, which are nothing more than replays of Victorian decor? What is there to those empty spin paintings, enlarged versions of the pseudo-art made in funfairs? Who can look for long at his silly sub-Bridget Riley spot paintings, or at the pointless imitations of drug bottles on pharmacy shelves? No wonder so many business big-shots go for Hirst: his work is both simple-minded and sensationalist, just the ticket for newbie collectors who are, to put it mildly, connoisseurship-challenged and resonance-free.

Where you see Hirsts you will also see Jeff Koons’s balloons, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s stoned scribbles, Richard Prince’s feeble jokes and pin-ups of nurses and, inevitably, scads of really bad, really late Warhols. Such works of art are bound to hang out together, a uniform message from our fin-de-siècle decadence.

(…. ) The now famous diamond-encrusted skull, lately unveiled to a gawping art world amid deluges of hype, is a letdown unless you believe the unverifiable claims about its cash value, and are mesmerized by mere bling of rather secondary quality; as a spectacle of transformation and terror, the sugar skulls sold on any Mexican street corner on the Day of the Dead are 10 times as vivid and, as a bonus, raise real issues about death and its relation to religious belief in a way that is genuinely democratic, not just a vicarious spectacle for money groupies such as Hirst and his admirers.”

Charles Thomson, co-founder of the international Stuckist movement of figurative realist artists, said this about Hirst and the Sotheby’s auction:

“The auction shows only that some people have more money than sense, and certainly more money than artistic insight. Hirst repeats ideas that are already in common currency, but merely makes them a larger size, gives them a pretentious title and puts them in an inappropriate context of art. If the same items were in a gift shop at the seaside, nobody would bother looking twice at them. It shows the triumph of marketing over substance, and operates on the same level as a craze in the school playground for Teletubbies or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The art world has historical precedents, such as the 1875 painting The Babylonian Marriage Market by auction record-breaking Victorian artist, Edwin Long, whose work fell to 10% of its previous value after his death and who is now forgotten. William-Adolphe Bouguereau was the must-have star of the 19th century French Salon. By the 1950s museums were giving his work away to get rid of it. Now he has become modestly collectible as representative of a certain affectation of the period, but his work has never regained its peak value or status. Hirst is fashionable, and fashion doesn’t last. Worse than that, it later looks ridiculous.

It is significant that collectors ahead of the game, such as Charles Saatchi and Helly Nahmad - both major fans in the past - have already offloaded their Hirsts. The art world is a pass-the-parcel game, and the last person holding the parcel is the loser, when everyone else decides they don’t want to play any more. Eventually some people are going to lose a lot of money. It’s the same blind money-for-nothing mentality that created the sub-prime lending disaster. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘Never buy anything because it is expensive.’”

Sotheby’s Hirst auction is the ultimate spectacle to come from a certain layer in the art world that has, from top to bottom, completely lost its way. It is the end result of the philosophy best expressed in 1975 by Andy Warhol, who wrote - “Making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art.” The Golden Calf indeed.

There is seemingly no end to the superficiality of today’s postmodern art and the cravenness of those fame seekers who create it. In 2003 BritArt movement superstars Jake and Dinos Chapman purchased a suite of Goya’s celebrated antiwar etchings, Disasters of War, and in a gesture supposedly meant to lay bare the inadequacy of art as protest, defaced the set of 80 prints by drawing cartoon faces of clowns and puppies on them. At the time art critic Robert Hughes said the works of Goya “will obviously survive these twerps, whose names will be forgotten a few years from now.” That was five years ago and sorry to say, we are still hearing about the Chapmans and their ilk. I’m loathe to mention them at all, save for the fact that they unfortunately represent a large portion of today’s art world - which needs to be emphatically criticized at every opportunity.

The Chapmans have once again placed themselves in the spotlight with their latest publicity stunt, the despoilment of thirteen actual watercolor paintings by Adolf Hitler, upon which they painted smiley faces, rainbows, psychedelic flowers and stars. Calling the suite of defaced artworks, If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be, Jake Chapman was quoted in The Guardian as having said, “If hell exists and Hitler is there, I think he is turning in his grave.” An infantile razz aimed at a long dead and despised mass-murderer hardly makes for insightful and profound art, let alone a passable joke.

Rather than a keen examination into the forces behind the rise of fascism, the Chapmans give us slapstick. Instead of investigating the links between the totalitarianism of the past and the despotism of today, the Chapmans deliver a gesture akin to the 1942 satirical recording by Spike Jones & the City Slickers, Der Fuehrer’s Face. At least the effort of Spike Jones and company had some relevancy in its day, while still being recognized for what it was - a trifling lowbrow joke. But postmodernism has obliterated the idea of high art and replaced it with the vulgarities of lowbrow. We are all cretins now. Weight, consequence, and meaning have little to do with the works of the Chapmans and their postmodernist cohorts, who think it is a clever thing to erase and otherwise rewrite history. As objets d’art Hitler’s paintings have little worth, but as historical artifacts they are a window into a dark past that we can not afford to trivialize or forget.

Artist Charles Tomson, co-founder of The Stuckist/Remodernist art movement and an implacable foe of postmodernism, offers us further elucidation regarding the Chapman/Hitler controversy in an article he wrote for CounterPunch.

The annual Whitney Biennial at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art is thought of by some as an important but frequently contentious survey of contemporary American art; unveiling the latest trends and directions in the U.S. art scene as well as plumbing the zeitgeist of the nation. If you accept that premise then you might also conclude that the country and its art are in very poor shape indeed.

Howard Halle of Time Out New York said the art on display at the 2008 Whitney Biennial “barely rises above the level of graduate school.” Mario Naves of The Observer brusquely dismissed the exhibit as the “blandest biennial in memory”, where “the easy gratifications of spectacle have replaced the rigors of engagement” and where “racial politics are no more meaningful than dressing in Viking drag.” Ariella Budick of Newsday wrote a representative but altogether stinging assessment of the exhibit titled, Whitney Biennial is a wasteland, an acerbic review that not only describes the biennial, but the overall state of much of today’s art:

“The impending recession haunts us; the gradual warming of the earth terrifies us; the never-ending war in Iraq drains our strength and our emotional resources. And yet the art market soars blithely upward, impervious to crises at home and abroad. The Whitney is not in the business of selling art, but this Biennial shows that it’s nevertheless caught up in the market’s bizarre hysteria, swooning over mediocrity and prodigally handing out prestige. (….) The real elephant in the room is the impotence of art. This Biennial is filled with wan political statements, reluctant commodities, unpersuasively subversive gestures and acts of broken narcissism. There are not one but two pieces involving bits of mirror fastened to plywood frames - both of them incomplete reflections, hovering in midair. The entire exhibit seems gripped by awkwardness and a lack of conviction in art’s ability to change lives, refract the world or even just make money.”

Without voluminous wall texts and over intellectualized exhibit catalog entries, William Cordova’s installation, The House that Frank Lloyd Wright built 4 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, is as cryptic and incomprehensible as any other postmodern mediocrity in the exhibit. A sprawling maze of wood beams that looks like a building under construction, Cordova’s work purportedly concerns the “strangeness of our own detritus and the too-often repressed histories they conceal.” Little is mentioned of the historical figures the installation is named after, and museum goers are simply left to traipse about the faux construction site to wonder who Fred Hampton and Mark Clark might have been.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, art critics and intellectual circles redefined high art as aloof, nonrepresentational, inward looking, and unconcerned with narrative or social criticism - a judgment that represented the heedless cutting of the artist’s vocal chords. Realism in art was circumscribed as kitsch, lowbrow, and banal. The great incongruity of 21st century postmodernist art is that it has come to extol and embody those very things - with the 2008 Whitney Biennial exemplifying this contradiction.

Two very different diamond rings are the focus of artworks currently being discussed in the art world and beyond - Blue Diamond, a sculpture by postmodernist Jeff Koons, and Marine Wedding, a photograph by Nina Berman. The artworks are poles apart, but each illustrates in its own way the crisis American society has fallen into. The works also exemplify the contrasting directions American art is taking in the face of that crisis.

Blue Diamond is a giant, highly polished stainless steel sculpture that’s nearly eight feet tall and more than seven feet wide. The replica jewel will be sold Nov. 13 at Christie’s auction of postwar and contemporary art, and it’s expected to sell for as high as $12 million. Christie’s described the work as “an almost comic-strip archetype, a stereotype, a cliché that has burst into monumental existence in our world, speaking of wealth and luxury and awe in an open, sincere and deliberately uncritical manner.” In other words, Blue Diamond is a crass celebration of ostentatious wealth that carries the moral authority and profundity of a Hallmark greeting card.

In contrast to the vapid kitsch offered by Koons, photographer Nina Berman puts forward a humanist vision that is at once heartrending and busting with empathy. In her photo, Marine Wedding, a diamond wedding ring is obscured by a beautiful bridal bouquet - and an unsettling vision of America’s war in Iraq. In 2004, Marine Corps reservist Ty Ziegal was trapped in a burning truck after it came under attack by Iraqi guerillas, that he survived was a miracle, but 19 rounds of reconstructive surgery could not restore the face stolen by war. The wedding day portrait of Renee Kline, 21, and Ty Ziegal, 24, has launched an eternal discussion on the meaning of love, devotion, sacrifice and war - whereas the only conversation surrounding the Koons sculpture has to do with how much it will sell for. You can view Berman’s photo on the New York Times website.

It is remarkable that Nina Berman’s photograph and Jeff Koons’ sculpture exist in the same time frame, and that they are both meant to reflect the current state of American society. Berman’s Marine Wedding does so with weighty philosophical insight, while Koons’ Blue Diamond can’t even muster enough relevance to be called inconsequential.

Berman’s photo comes from a larger body of work she calls, Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq, which are compassionate studies of wounded Iraq war vets. Marine Wedding stands alone as a jarring image, with the great majority of images from Berman’s series being quite tame and contemplative by comparison. But Purple Hearts by no means represents the totality of Berman’s vision, and an overview of her growing body of work reveals an artist sincerely pursuing an honest examination of “the American Way of Life.” By comparison, even a cursory review of Koons’ oeuvre exposes an artist with all the sophistication of a corn dog.