"The Worship of Art: Notes on the new god" by Tom Wolfe 1984

This article is much along the same lines as the last Tom Wolfe article we read.  Essentially he is railing on against contemporary/modern art and how ridiculous he thinks it is.  His particular point in this article is that art is the new religion of the wealthy and cultured.  People do not donate their estates or money to a certain church anymore, they donate it to a major museum or the creation of such a museum.  He talks specifically about corporations quite a bit and how they hire art critics/consultants to buy art for them so they can say that they support the arts.  And these consultants buy modern, often abstract art, not art that the companies' employees will enjoy.  This art is not meant to be enjoyable but is rather a legitimation of this company's wealth and evidence of their support of the arts.  

Jean Dubuffet, Group of Four Trees

He also goes on for a while about abstract sculptures that are put in front of buildings and in public areas.  People wanting to put in a sculpture always employ people from the art world in their decisions resulting in merely a celebration of modern art, Wolfe argues, rather than, say, a monument to Franklin Roosevelt.  Wolfe scoffs at critics like Clement Greenberg, who said that "all great contemporary art 'looks ugly at first.'"  He also bemoans the fact that now the major reason that the public is going to museums is to learn about contemporary art instead of just going to enjoy the works.  He obviously believes there is too much theory going on and it is all a big sham and a waste of people's time.