FOUNDERS:

 BORIS LURIE    SAM GOODMAN    STANLEY FISHER

HEADQUARTERS:

 DIETMAR KIRVES [East]   CLAYTON PATTERSON [West]

INVOLVED ARTISTS:

SHIT NO!

The uncomfortable truthof the art world-market in deep crisis is beginning to show its effect: a long  drawn-out process having had its beginning in Dada and periodically interrupted by countertendencies - not all of them reactionary in spirit - is nearing its completion. Artificial cultivation of decorative and aesthetic values, reckless investment speculation, aided by large numbers of collaborating artists has brought about a situation reminiscent of the last stage of a bull market on the stock exchange. Aesthetically and philosophically the bottom has already dropped out: the mini-movements cultivating aesthetic facets bypassed by the pioneers of modern art, are being groomed, cultivated, enlarged all out of proportion to their art-historical value; even amputated splinters of old rebellious Dada are being enlarged into acceptable - and saleable aesthetic parlor games. The butchers and grocers and people deathly frightened of inflation pursue their favorite penny stocks now at over inflated values. The theoretical section of the art market consists of museum curators eager to please trustees and the uneducated public, to break meaningless attendance records; artists-university professors promoting their own wares and values to unmolded young minds, thus creating false historical continuity through misinformation; publication and critics, in one mode or another in the pay of the art establishment. The practical work is performed by artists-producers operating enterprises out of five-thousand-square-foot mammoth lofts in the manufacturing areas of New York City, properly insulated in their habitat from any contact with the lives of actual people. At the very top of the pyramid are aristocratic upper-class investment-cultural conditioning interests, their task financed by unaware taxpayers' money to a very large extent (whose opinions on the subject are never solicited), and below that august level, their Kapos, the nouveau-riche liberal investors-speculators and their associated shopkeepers- gallery owners. Art Councils provide additional infusions of public funds … and the FBI takes particular unusual care in guarding art investments from theft and forgery.---Boris Lurie

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Welcomes correspondence from anyone and anywhere on this globe for fighting against art manipulation by art worldmarket dealers.