Phoney

2018

NECKLACE (fake pearls, fake phone, fake shoe, fake gold beads, fake gold chain, recycled silver)

On Vainglory and the Affliction of Affectation.

'As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.'

'Art is a quality that permeates an experience; it is not, save a figure of speech, the experience itself. Esthetic experience is always more than esthetic. In it a body of matters and meanings, not in themselves esthetic, become esthetic as they enter into an ordered rhythmic movement toward consummation. The material itself is widely human ... The material of esthetic experience in being human – human in connection with the nature of which it is a part – is social. Esthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and celebration of the life of a civilization, a means of promoting its development and is also the ultimate judgment upon the quality of a civilization. For while it is produced and enjoyed by individuals, those individuals are what they are in the content of their experience because of the cultures in which they participate.'

John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York: Penguin Group USA Inc. (original © 1934, Perigee 2005 edition, pp. 339 and 357-8)