It Could Be By a Mental Patient, or a Hillbilly, or a Chimpanzee

Or, how about a Wall Street banker?

Former regular artist turned scam artist Caleb Larson has created a perpetual money machine, and he's selling it as art. Over and over and over again. Two points from the first link struck me particularly:

"Larsen takes a cut of each sale...." Making him, then, a self-authorized taxman. And if the tax collector gets to keep the taxes, why, so much the better!

"So. what happens if a new owner decides to break the cycle and refuse to plug the box in? According to Larsen, that would sever his connection to the work. It'll still be a work of art, he says, but it won't be his work anymore." And his point is...what, exactly? That's what happens when you relinquish title to something: it's not yours anymore. Insofar as it's "art" at all, he wants it to be performance art without his having to perform. But that's not how Western art is conceived; rather, you separate something from its contexts and just value it on æsthetic grounds. Witness all of the museum exhibitions of prehistoric "art."

Larsen is the current poster child for why artists, scam or otherwise, shouldn't be quoted outside of their chosen medium. If they were any good at communicating in words they'd be writers or speakers.