Is Post-minimalist-abstract-geometric-optical art the beginning of the end?

A friend of a friend runs artlog.com — a community portal for New York artists and art lovers. Last week artlog hosted an event at the Chelsea Museum. Since the general mood at school is lugubrious and everyone around me seems to be losing their job, I thought it would be good diversion from all things heavy and important. The inner sanctum of the New York art community definitely acts as if nothing bad is amiss and seems generally immune to the apocalyptic state of the universe. 

As I walked in,  impossibly hip New Yorkers gyrated to a DJ spinning “wicked beats” while an iterative digital loop displayed images of a devilish looking cartoon figure with a giant penis. I drank sparkling (organic) wine and chatted with an artist about her work.

“So what kind of stuff do you work on” says I.

 ”Post-minimalist-abstract-geometric-optical art” says she nonchalantly.

“Of course” says I as I pour myself some more wine with the practiced ease of someone who is a “patron of the arts “. Just kidding about the patron of the arts part.

I drew four conclusions from this evening.

1. The economy can’t be that bad if New Yorkers have the time and money to mentally masturbate about optical art.

2. Art is an escape and certain art forms flourish in times of distress. In a 1932 Wiemar Republic, this women would have been Liza Minnelli.

3. Every “world” has an internal logic and language that is inscrutable to people outside that world. If an artist got stuck in an elevator at an MBA program and heard this sentence ” We need to use crystal ball software to create scenarios for the WACC (weighted average cost of capital)” he/she might have a visceral negative reaction tantamount to my  own “What the fuck are these people talking about?” reaction.

4. This is the beginning of the end. Some historians like Jared Diamond remark that historically, when midgets are used for recreational purposes (as was the case in Rome),  it is the first telltale sign of civlizational collapse. When New Yorkers dance to this image in the background and talk about post-whatever-art, the end may be closer than we think.

Some hybrid of 3 and 4 is probably correct.