Vignettes #33

I've always been at war with the artsy-fartsy crowd. The other day we visited the brand-new 'state-of the-art' Museum Brandhorst in Munich. Brandhorst is a multi-millionaire art collector who's putting his collection on display in a giant new building. Obviously, he only buys big-brand collectable names like Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Mike Kelley, etc, whatever can be currently purchased as an investment.

And there they were: literally several thousand visitors, the same people who are at awe in front of a multi-million-buck smearing, but would cringe hearing a John Cage composition, never have seen (or heard about) Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou or never got beyond the first pages of, say, Ulysses or Naked Lunch, if they ever had tried.

At some of our concerts as Lyssa humana it often took only a few minutes before most of the audience started running for the exits (which I count as a success!). We also once did an exhibition displaying our self-made instruments and 'artwork'. Each member of Lyssa humana made their own contributions. One of mine was an old frying pan that I hadn't washed for several months and had let rot over that time.

The frying pan was meant as a Dadaist anti-art provocation, but it turned out to be one of the most lauded and appreciated exhibits, both by the visitors as well as the reviewers in the local newspapers...