What's in a name?

In the previous post, I lampoon and lament the National Gallery of Art's recent acquisition of a "Donald Judd." Since, as I posit, Judd's box is not art, why even care?
Unfortunately, as an artist I have to care. The canonization of junk has hurt artists enormously. Real artists -- at least people of genuine talent who might become real artists -- are discouraged by trends like this. It's hard to do the hard work of learning when your whole enterprise is trashed by the very people that one would have hoped to have champion it. Many artists I know whose own art-making could not be further in spirit from the inane, hipsterism that surrounds curators like NGA's Jeffrey Weiss, will nevertheless pay lip service to "contemporary art." They seem to feel that they must go along with the trends since to do otherwise is to earn the deepest cut of all, the charge of being "traditional."
Oh how things have changed since Rubens was in charge.
But Van Gogh (who had done a stint as an art dealer long before having made art himself) correctly identified the false pattern of making artists into "names." And what was just the 19th century's version of branding has become full blown insanity today -- because in the case of things like Donald Judd's boxes, the objects really don't matter at all. It is all about "names." Why Judd instead of somebody else? Why not? When there is no purpose, it hardly matters where the magic wand lands.
However, real art does still exist. It has gone underground in the sense that you do not find it in the well appointed and expensive modern museums (with some rare exceptions). Where is it then? Who knows? In somebody's house. In a private collection gathered by someone of taste who lives quietly enjoying his or her objects.
It is somewhere but we don't quite know where. But one knows that it is there because art has always been there. The impulse to make images is a deep and true component of the human spirit, and the images that comprise the best art are made by people of genuine talent (this should come as no surprise) and the imagery will speak to the real minds and hearts of ordinary human beings. Why? Because the real spectator like the real artist is an intelligent, thoughtful and emotionally responsive human being.
The hipster elitism of the official art world exists to satisfy the vanity of its participants (who evidently wouldn't recognize real art if it came up and bit them). But the officialdom will pass away. This has happened before too.
Remember Govaert Flinck? You don't? He was the guy who beat out Rembrandt in the Amsterdam City Hall art contest. Flinck was a damn sight more interesting than Judd, though!
This too will pass.
Contemporary art should mean that which is made in the present time. That it refers to a very narrow style of art for the consumption of the foppish class ought to tell us something. That the great number of people buying Winsor Newton colors are out there doing something. It will be for our descendants to find out.
Alas!
[At the top of the post: Govaert Flinck]