While I have some of the same general concerns you do, I think one has to be careful about being perceived a completely subjective snob about this.
In high school I rebelled against the kind of "pseudo-art" you rail against by turning in for one of my art classes an "installation" which consisted of filling my locker with orderly stacks of Dr. Pepper cans, calling it "Dr. Pepper has no Point" (subliminal reference to Harry Nilsson's The Point).
I'll refer you to this
recent screed against Dale Chihuly who's work I love and realizes such
amazing beauty that I considered the review slander (as did an avalanche of letters that it generated). The article's point was that it was "mere craft"--a charge commonly leveled by many artists who have no skills but put plenty of "message" and "enlightenment" in their works.
I detest
Laurie Anderson, mostly because it seems so "unartistic" to me, but it of course is *loaded* with messages that I mostly agree with. I don't mind her calling herself a performance artist, and I won't disagree with labeling her as that.
Mostly this is because this is *one* area where "elitism" truly reigns: I don't think *anyone* has the right to judge something as "art" or "not art." The market will judge whether its "worthy" or not, but to try to sit in judgment on a term as ephemeral as "art" is unsupportable, and in my mind exposes more about the viewer than the artist!
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic,
Buffy
