What is truly radical today? 

In order to answer this question we might first consider what is conventional? 

In 21st Century visual arts any work directly related to DaDa is something of a hollow imitation, often no more important or valuable than plastic flowers.   The genius of the DaDa master Duchamp's most emblematic works lies in their intentionality as a one shot deal, impossible to imitate without making the imitator the butt of the joke.  Directly or obviously imitating these works is no different from imitating the inimitable works of Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, Picasso, etc.  Both Duchamp and Pollock intentionally closed the door behind them, and locked it tight.  Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, of the 2nd DaDa movement POP, saw this and avoided the trap by adding lessons from the abstract expressionists Dekooning, Pollock, et.al.,  as well as Duchamp & Co.  Blending it all into an interesting soup all their own.  Fortunately they also learned from Dekooning and left their doors open for others to follow.  Warhol fell into Duchamp's trap, and found himself like a Bubble Gum Rock Star, stuck on an ever diminishing stage playing his very few adolescent hits.

Trust your inward human nature, and the initial response of ordinary people, the art lite considered sophisticated and above the understanding of mere ordinary 'uninformed' people by Late Post-Modernists is every bit as insipid, as vacuous, as shallow as it appears at first glance.  There is no hidden depth, no mystery, no aesthetic emotion... Nothing to 'understand or 'get' in that work. The work of Serranno, Emin, Hirst, Ofili, McArthey, Koons et. al. is every bit the hackneyed con it first appears to those who have not lost their common sense.  When in doubt, ask the secretary down the street,  a receptionist, janitor, or heck just ask the trashmen, they can separate the garbage from valuables at a glance.

Ordinary people, working class people expressing sincere emotions and real experiences with honesty is more valuable than anything made by these candy colored charlatans. 

A 21st Century Artists' Creed:
(also known as the X-Post Creed.)

1. The fundamental elements of art are perennial.

2. Precedence, fame, and influence are irrelevant to aesthetics.

3. Gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, origin, spirituality, temperament et al, are incidental to the merits of the work itself.

4. The concepts, idea, explanation, rational or intent are subservient to the potency of the work.

5. The artists’ hand is vital.

6. Work that intentionally harms, encourages the harm, or celebrates the harm of a sentient being is not Fine Art.  (Even when floating in formaldehyde.)

7. Place, time, and experience transmuted through a rich interior life are the heart of the Arts.

8. Media, technology, technique and process are means, not the end.

9. Politics are transient… Art remains.

10. Integrity, humility, curiosity, and honest effort are the artists’ best route to acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills & understanding.

11. The Arts’ ancient resonance speaks from our most inward, unique, yet universal living language (our prime language) whose foundations we each build upon our earliest and inmost experiences.

12.  Aesthetic beauty lies in the skillful construction of harmonic balance... wherein is allowed to creep the craven trespass of ecstatic passion.  In a masterpiece this tincture is then held in an ever so tenuous, yet lasting pause.

F.A. Alsbach

(Originally part of an art history lecture given at Missouri Valley College, Spring 2010, which cost me the emenity of the Art Dept Chair and eventually my job.  Ah well...)