Vispo: Don't Surface! Underground With Marcel Duchamp

'The great artist of tomorrow will go underground...'

....................said Marcel Duchamp in 1961, disregarding the fact that many dwelt there for decades in the 20th century before he spoke...and in the previous centuries, no doubt, for underground is the natural habitat of great artists, those who go unrecognised, that is...underground being that immense realm where the light of success does not penetrate and, occasionally, critics and journalists venture, torches in hand, to seek out a discovery of their own which they may bag and bring to the surface in order to gain recognition for themselves as much as the artist.....................

                                                                     underground today is this thing, the internet, yet unlike the cavern of old, it promises the potential for discovery...if the right person finds your spot underground...whereby they might illuminate you with a link...'Look!'...........

                                                                                                                  but these are not the same times as before...they seldom are...and although the underground artist may be linked she may gain little more than an increase in visitors...is the work for sale? It is! How many people buy art? Very few. Oh, fuck it......

..............the purpose of making art, especially for that peculiar exponent known as the 'digital artist' who, let us be honest, is not a real artist but an imposter, not fit to bear the title, is not to make sales, but to make art! This is nonsense, surely.......................as if making art were some quaint, folksy pastime...images passed around the camp fire for global villagers to admire...when in fact real artists are in need of a good agent, at least, who will promote them, pimp them to gallery-owners and, one never knows, actually generate sales in the process! 

Marcel, you may trumpet the values of going underground, which is easy and superficially admirable of you from your lofty position high on the art hill, basking in glory as the King of Conceptual...oh yes...yet what you 'predict', or even suggest, is merely an inevitability...to 'go underground' one must first be above...and that is a place very few inhabit....