It's been awhile since I've gone to Chelsea. Yesterday was one of the most glorious days of the summer and my walk took me west to the galleries before heading for the river walk. The park at the end of 23 was packed with kids running through the goofy water sprayers. It was wonderful. I can't say as much for the galleries. Summer shows are all about a few things - none of which are taken seriously.

If it's a summer solo show you can bet that the gallery is fulfilling a contract obligation to an artist that has not accomplished either of the 2 Fs of gallerist law. F number one - Feed me ie. sell - you bastard - sell. F number two Fuck me - ie. get me laid by being popular, bring in the hot young things, or if that doesn't work, then you do it. I was astounded by the candor of the gallerist who told me this, but a lesson well learned. The summer solo show says ciao baby, you're on your way out.

The summer group show is about throwing art against the wall and seeing what sticks. With the market as it is these days I think most things will be sticking. The Television Personality Quotient is high these days. The TPQ is not about presenting anything new, but bringing up the next clone of the tried and true. It's why all the people on TV look alike and why all the art in Chelsea does too. It's not like there's a zeitgeist of radical ideas here at the beginning of the century. It's more like watching a replay of the 1980s. We've seen it all before, but strangely, there are a whole lot of folks pretending that we haven't.

The worrying thing about the acceptance of the TPQ is the number of art blogs that are flogging this crap as first rate intellectual visual fare. Most of these bloggers were there (and I mean the RENT generation) the first time. I know that a lot of them are trying to make a living from this younger generation, but that is no excuse for their lack of backbone. STOP IT! Every gallery I was in on 22nd and 23rd street looked like a page out of those fat compendiums of EV artists I poured over in college. To top it all off Haim Steinbach is having a show at Sonnebend. Christ - my little sojourn was a time warp.

The thing is that our time, this time - is all about not having a history - not recognizing it, understanding it, learning from it, being responsible for it. Corporate culture is all about the short attention span and the art world lives it in spades. The work I saw yesterday was empty of Western Visual History. It makes what's on view look so thoughtfully slight and ham handedly executed that it's embarrassing. Some of the visual ideas reach all the way back to 1982, and in a couple of cases, to the ancien regime of 1962. But anything deeper, anything more complex or visually connected does not exist. Is this really the best we Americans have to offer? Is this the best thought and ability? In another time it wouldn't stand. We had men and women who broke new ground at great cost to themselves - it wasn't about the money - it was about history - making it and dealing with it. Nothing is at stake anymore except the rent.

I understand that the art world is now an entertainment industry, and as such, is acting like one. But for some of us, there has to be a bit more. And I'm not talking about the "indy spirit" or the "retaining of values" bullshit. Reactionary ideas are what we are living. What is needed is thought. What is needed is experiment. What is needed is time in the studio - and not being so bloody self satisfied with the first blooms of visual drivel to issue from the brush. Art is hard work and if the hard work isn't done we get empty entertainment - something to relieve the boredom rather than push our thoughts into new areas. Yeah, not all of it can be great - but at least it can get close, and I would prefer a grand failure over all of that easily forgotten crap in Chelsea.