For years American Pop Art has been in a state of cultural decline. New York City, the former mecca for starving artists, is now flooded with tacky Photoshopped billboards and overrun by hipsters wearing Ed Hardy apparel.

For those of you that are not familiar with the brand, visualize a generic skeleton and a floral tattoo fused together, add some flamboyant sequins and a vintage fade, and there you have it.

Contemporary Pop artists have become overly facetious in their creations, lacking any profound meaning to their work. What happened to original productions and artwork that actually delved into some deeper meanings and themes?

Adrian Rodriguez, one such artist featured on YouTube, claims pouring food coloring into a toilet bowl is nothing short of artistic genius. He calls his brand of art “Toilygraph.”

The idea of such a thing is completely ludicrous and a bastardization of any and all respectable art. For starters, the toilet is completely devoid of any alteration or creative insight √É¢’ it is in fact just a toilet. I could just as easily assign random meaning to any inanimate object and call it a masterpiece.

So as a tribute to modern Pop Art, I’ve decided to design my own gallery compiled from a few objects I have found around campus. My first exhibit will be a copy of the Binghamton Review with the word “TENACITY” written on every individual page to convey the willingness to persist in the face of unpopular consensus and a nonexistent readership. My goal in creating this work was to influence my fan base positively and have them realize the value of internalizing a sense of worth.

The next piece I will be displaying is a slab of concrete taken from a site of walkway renovation. Using a special epoxy, I’ll fasten a wad of crumpled $20 bills to its surface to qualify my unique rendition of the stone. The underlying message that I’m trying to communicate through this magnum opus is the indiscretion that arises when considering appropriate expenses for University funds. I could think of no better way to convey this theme than through a fragment of what was a completely functional walkway, torn up for outlandish costs with no apparent reason or motivating force.

My final work will be the headpiece of Bob the Bearcat with an asbestos-based question mark mounted on its forehead to represent the anomaly, and unseen danger, I believe our mascot poises. The name itself evokes imagery of some hideous breeding experiment between the two mammals gone awry. I can vividly imagine a beast with the hulking frame and menacing claws of a North American grizzly, but with a kitten’s adorable face and huggable, soft fur. My message is simple: The bearcat is a befuddling combination of adorable and potentially lethal not to be taken lightly.

No matter how abstract these theoretics may be, these instances of modern Pop Art surely cannot be dignified by any stretch of the imagination. The emergence of such pseudo-artists has created a pandemic of artistic abuses. The remedy is fortunately quite simple √É¢’ stop buying their artwork and visiting their shows. By encouraging them we only seek to affirm that they have authenticity.

Some contemporary Pop Art gives a bad name to the discipline of art in general. People come to associate these peculiar, frivolous interpretations of art as a representation of the field itself, and in doing so belittle the creative process and the achievements of genuinely commendable Pop artists.