An Art Museum in the Postmodern World

Nude Descending a Staircase

An Art Museum in the Postmodern World -- A Parody-Poem on Marcel Duchamp

The following poem is modeling Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California," a poem we read earlier in this class. It's done to parody the Dadaism of Marcel Duchamp. Instead of the supermarket, it takes place in the Duchamp section of a modern art museum. And instead of walking with Walt Whitman I am walking with Kenyon Cox, an academic classicist artist. So instead of decrying the lost America of Walt Whitman I am decrying the lost America of Kenyon Cox and grand art. 



Fountain

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Kenyon Cox, for I walked into the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Duchamp section with a headache self-conscious looking at the "Nude Descending a Staircase."

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went through the Duchamp section, dreaming nightmares of art!

What? "Fountain"? What? "Sink stopper"? Companies of intellectuals watching at night! Aisles full of professionals! -- and you, Norman Rockwell, what are you doing down by the "Dart Object"?

I saw you, Kenyon Cox, childless, lonely old antique, turning the "Bicycle Wheel" and eyeing the "Comb."

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the meaning of art? What prices were these? And who is Rose Selavy?

Why are you sneezing, Rose Selavy?

I wandered in and out of the stacks of readymades following you, and followed in my imagination by a Dadaist.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary nightmare viewing Duchamp, possessing every readymade already at home, and never passing the cashier for that.



Where are we going, Kenyon Cox? The doors are closing. Which way does the brush point tonight?

(I touch the "Bottle Rack" and dream of our odyssey in the Duchamp section and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through art that doesn't lift? The figures add shade to shade, lights out in the artists, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love, home to our grand reaching?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Duchamp quit poling the ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of postmodernism?

Global Popular Culture and the Beatles

A couple weeks ago I went to a lecture called "America through the Beatles." The lecture is a quick summary of a Humanities class by that same name. The main thesis of the lecture was the following:

"The Beatles took American music and American style, synthesized it and transformed it and sent it back to America for its consumption. Thus the British invasion--at least as manifest by the Beatles--is perhaps a misnomer since it was really America which "invaded" the Beatles first." 

I thought it was interesting to learn how the Beatles listened to American blues, country, western, and rock-and-roll music. Inspired by this music, and by American movies, they set about to write their own.

Having lived in Denmark for most of my life (55% of my life there, 45% in the USA) I understand how American culture via American music and film is a big influence in Scandinavia -- often succesful artists become succesful by imitating American trends, or better yet, by combining American trends with local Danish cultural and historical underpinnings. I think this is more a product of an American-dominant globalization than it is a product of an American fascination per se -- since America is often criticized and disliked politically.

Globalized popular culture, however, is strongly dominated by the American music industry and by Hollywood. Why? Because popular culture, as we know it today, started in America. It's Coney Island gone global! It's the American middle class merging upper culture and lower culture on a worldwide scale. It started in America so it is dominated by America. The Beatles is just one example of this--buying into the popular culture produced by America and using this as the source of their own music. Most merchandise today may be "made in China" -- but most popular culture of music and film is, directly or indirectly, "made in the USA."

One of my favorite Beatles songs