The Whole World + The Work = ?

the brick industrial garage on the corner in the west village that was gavin brown's enterprise is painted white, and martin creed's work no. 300, the whole world + the work = the whole world, is painted in lower case, sans serif font along the top of the first floor, like frieze. a blurry figure is walking on the sidewalk in front of the bulding.
Very much not what I was referring to: Martin Creed, Work No. 300, 2003 image via martincreed.com

Looking at some art from a year or two ago, and the irrelevance really hits hard.

Reading a 70s catalogue essay trying to make the case for a then-difficult artist—an artist whose work I love—and it sounds so banal and uncompelling. Is that what really mattered then? Was that the best you could do? Is that really what all this art history was built on, and how we got here?

The world is always changing, and art with/ahead/after it. But there are times when it shifts so much, it feels like it’s thrown the relationship between art and the world out of whack.