What percent of people walking down that street:

1. Have any interest in or affection for visual art?

2. Would ever willingly go into a museum?

3. If they ever went into a museum, would notice and/or like Tuymans' painting at all?

4. Would *actually* like it? Not look at it because they were told they were supposed to, but actually respond to it in some way, however minimal?

Wouldn't surprise me if that number were at, or below, 4% of the general population. 4% of random passerbys on their way somewhere else actually being jerked out of their walk and noticing it seems pretty surprisingly high, actually. Especially for an abstract piece. Tuymans should be proud.

Cool, but totally unsurprising that the village of copyists turns out some real talent.

Back on the Old Master days, a lot of the training was just straight copying. Still is - sometimes, you can learn a lot more straight from Van Eyck than you can from a two-bit art school teacher.

In the old days, apprentices copied, sold their copies as copies (pre-photography, right?), and thus paid their way while they learned via their copying. Basically, this is the exact same thing going on.

This gives me palsies of joy.

Michel Lauziere may be the originator, but I just feel for the RC car one more. Seeing the wobbly rollerblader in the middle makes it seem so clearly an effort - my main reaction is, "Wow, look at how *cool* this artist is. This must be so *hard*." He's so "*cool*." But having the car in there just pushes it into mysterious, magical-sublime-happy-neuron land.

You know, I've been pretty wary of any form of "performance art" or "installation" or anything like that - not a priori, but just on the grounds that every exemplar I've yet seen has pretty much sucked dead whale turd. But this - this is pretty much the most beautiful thing I've seen since Miles Davis. It fills me with awe, wonder, nostalgia, sadness, and a great love for all humanity. Somebody give this dude a Macarthur Fellowship. Yay performance art! Big up, China! I'm behind you 200%, and if you come want to perform in my town, I will work hard to get you the art world reception you need.

This seems like legalesed-up version of the usual ass-covering - in the same spirit as a head shop with a big sign over the bongs that says "For use with tobacco products only".

There's actually a word, in Japanese, that I can't remember, but it means something like: "the beauty of an object well-worn with use". I've seen it used specifically to refer to why soft woods are prized for go-boards - because over long usage, the board develops divots where the stones go down.

Also seen it used in reference to stuff like wood-handled gardening tools.