The consequences of race riots and the counterculture movement are still being felt, but these works don't focus on the present. Instead, they evoke nostalgia for a revolution that was never fully realised and disappointment at the feebleness of today's political activism.

(From the Guardian, in a piece called "Art's Feeble Revolution," by Alexander Belenky, I don't agree with most of the artists the writer chose to pick on, but the thesis is pretty right on. Sam Durant, CalArts professor and local LA luminary, has been mining this idea for years. In my opinion, Durant's done only one good show (in fact it was really good which makes everything else look so bad), the monuments at Paula Cooper, everything else including his last show at Blum & Poe) was so didactic I feel I deserve a degree for suffering through it. For example a three page-single-space-ten-point-font press release (if you need a nap, here's the link) to tell us exactly how we're supposed to feel. Thanks Sam.

In the end I'm glad somebody started this trend and called it what it is, a feeble revolution. Purposeless nostalgia only highlight the inability of art to bring about social change.)