The art world has different faces; it is the place where art activity is commercialised, but also the place where ideas are presented and exchanged for free. It produces useful knowledge, but also ‘art pollution’. It offers some freedom, but also subordinates its employees. It has tools to criticise western cultural domination, colonialism, the hegemony of science and so on, but it also produces a lot of idiocy. It offers visual experiences, but also makes people blind. With all these galleries, museums, art schools, magazines, critics, collectors, collections, sellers, art fairs, websites, books, catalogues – with all this collected knowledge and collected idiocy, including of course, artists – it is huge, global and powerful, a cultural machine.
Zmijewski, Artur (2010). The Politics of FEAR, Artur Zmijewski interviewed by Daniel Miller. Art Monthly No.333 (February). p.3.
