Just a quick note to let you know if you don't donate to Art Fag City's latest fundraiser you won't have a chance to be the high donor, who gets a wonderfully appropriate print from Saul Chernick: Derivative (straight out of a Dover clip art book, in fact), pointless, overpriced at any price. I guess if AFC had to pick a signature artist, a guy who makes Roy Lichtenstein look like a brilliant innovator and skilled draftsman is perfect.
Chris, it's none of my business, but why don't you just leave this fag thing alone?
That faux medieval woodcut just really got my goat.
Sour grapes!
Yeah, I so wish I was a talentless hack engaged in the basest of sophistry to explain my plagiarized artwork.
If it's not sour grapes, then of course it must be that you just don't "get it." Those two rationalizations cover just about every objection or opposition to the party line. The possibility that the party line could be defective, let alone a crock, is absolutely out of the question.
And by the way, Chris, even though it's a moot point, the thing is not faux medieval. It's more like a Rococo-Victorian combo. Medieval is rather less prissy.
i think i need that book - would be great for graphic design in the "urban" flava'
Modern Roccoccoo - maximalism man, thats where it's at. If you are there. SOme people aren;t there yet.
Poor AFC, still doesn't get it. Here's a knock knock joke - you start.
I think you're wrong, Jack. It's a pretty close copy of a Totentanz woodcut probably from about the 15th century. You can see a very similar (even more rococo) one at the Wikipedia page.
Chris, it's not worth arguing about it, but the woodcut on that Wikipedia page does not look rococo to me. The plant elements are much more plain, basic or straightforward, not self-consciously decorative, prissy or feminine.
Yes Jack, two quotes direct to me from fully paid up party members:
"all the major movements in art are shocking to the people of the time, therefore if we show work that shocks it will eventually be seen as important" - a state funded gallery director - did no-one ever explain to these guys that the Greeks worked it out with dogs and tails right at the beginning of their civilization?
"We didn't buy it because we think it is great art. We bought it in case one day it might be considered great art and we didn't want to miss out" - a curator on the purchase of Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII - um... can anyone give them the address of that warehouse that Indiana Jones uses?
Well, it's painfully obvious these party members are blissfully unaware of how lame and stupid they sound. Of course, that's the beauty of party membership: you can be an idiot and get away with it.
Looking up Equivalent VIII I find this: "The bricks for 'Equivalent VIII' were found at a brickworks in Long Island City, New York.... Because the sculpture did not sell when originally exhibited he returned the bricks to the yard and got his money back."
Wow! are there things built out of Art all over NY?.... or are they just built out of bricks? (the official answer when this question was first asked was that a conceptual work only existed in a specific context.. Outside of a gallery or a collection they were just a pile of bricks. Sanctioned by the artist they transmuted into Art)
The sad thing is that the two party members mentioned are nice intelligent guys when they turn their brains on. It just doesn't happen much when they are at work.
It may well be they know the party line is full of it, but they figure they have to abide by it and at least appear to buy into it for career reasons. I'm sure there are some "true believers," but I expect they're definitely outnumbered by opportunists or insecure types who just want to fit in and "belong."
And even when the innocent indicates the insufficiency of the emperor's attire to a reception of general public ribaldry, the parade proudly continues because it's participants are not prepared to publicly admit either their gullibility or their complicity. Yet rather than manufacturing our own insubstantial contribution to the imperial wardrobe, some of us weavers persistently continue to sing "The King is in the altogether!" ...... hmmmm....
The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes departs from reality in that the tailor in the fable knew he was full of shit but in the art world of today, the tailor often thinks they are, in fact, creating a beautiful invisible garment.
Chris, the whole thing is a big twisted game, and most of the players may, in fact, know that, but there's so much money involved, so much secondary gain, so much investment in it (both material and psychological, whether sincere or opportunistic), that the system simply cannot come clean, and is essentially forced to keep up the charade as long as it possibly can. It will never change of its own volition.
Luckily no system lasts as long as "never". A paradigm shift will roll around (either for the better or worse) sooner or later. The NYC gallery scene has only dominated world art and it's mores since the late 1940's with the CIA's substantial cash injection into Abstract Expressionism as a cultural contribution to the cold war. The Paris gallery scene dominated for less than a century before that. England has only been a major player since the late 60's when the English decided (probably temporarily) to give up regarding any art less than 100 years old as somehow unpleasant and embarrassing (like stepping in dog-shit). All levers - such as Chris's blog - contribute towards an eventual shift, we just won't know, if we know, until after the event what the final trigger was.
Bucky Fuller liked to call himself "trimtab". A trimtab is a little rudder which is part of the really big rudder on a large sea vessel. The energy required to change the rudder position (i.e. steer the boat) is huge, so rather than move the big rudder directly, the trimtab is adjusted, and the force of the water acting on that moves the big rudder into position. The trimtab is quite small, then, and seems insignificant, but in fact it turns the whole huge ship.
Does art criticism have to be bland? that's my concern with Art fag City. If Paddy Johnson is a trim tab, warp speed better be 5 knots. Hey, so urs fischer, everyone is talking about how he heroicly scales up ephemeral gestures using industrial processes like a modern day prometheus, unbound and stealing fire from the gods' who must be crazy to have such lax security. So uh prometheus, what's eating you? ha ha ha ah ah ahaahahahhaha.
I'm raising funds to go to Disneyland - turns out I'm allready there, the desert of the real, the endlessly self replicating simulacra, gosh I'm thirsty. hey paddy, pedantry may sell to "the sister of the economist" - but please, less mirror, more smoke, an art dies every time you write like that.
Real official professional art criticism means writing a whole review of an artist whose metier is erasing parts of porno magazine pages and managing to mention eight other erased-porn artists while at no point questioning whether such work should be classified as art or expressing an opinion on whether it's any good.
I have no interest in that sort of criticism. Further, it's simply bad writing.
Now, Chris, you know the drill. "Open-mindedness" (as in "it's all good" or "I'd better not risk looking uncool") is de rigueur for party membership.
I've said before -- an idea I got from Glenn Erickson -- that it's not uncool, it's unhip. Cool is sufficient unto itself. You are cool. Hip is defined as opposed to something else. You are hip and he is not.
Officially approved art criticism must not appear unhip by accidentally rejecting something that turns out to be hip.
I call this the Jazz Effect. Everyone is so afraid of ending up like those music critics who disliked jazz when it emerged and turned out to be hopelessly square that they'll accept all kinds of crap just in case it turns out to be the next jazz.
What they don't realize is they'd be better off going by taste than by hipness. Using taste, jazz can be good without having to worry about hip or unhip.
Chris, you and Erickson can make that distinction, but most people wouldn't. My point, obviously, is the same either way: the hip, or would-be hip, live in fear of being taken for unhip. That's why it's so ironic, not to say hilarious, to hear these people go on about how "fearless" they are, when they're terrified of being caught "off base" or being suspected of "not getting it."
Would-be hip, the truly hip go their own way regardless and Happy Days remains as good a cultural analogy as any. Anyway, none of them are secure enough to withstand ridicule, point the finger with enough humor and conviction and they do sometimes buckle. Trouble is, that the form of the TV studio debate is now the power structure for all cultural discussion. If you are on the platform, you can get away with almost anything but say the same from the audience and you are easily dismissed (I've played both - being on the platform is great fun if you don't care whether or not you get invited back). Only way round is to build a strong enough structure between you to become the platform they have to address. At the moment, your blogs are just voices, however eloquent, from the audience.
Yes, the "platform" confers supposed validity or authority, when in fact those on it frequently have little if any of either, in the true sense. Same goes for the art institutions, which are also a kind of platform, like the art mags, the arts pages of "serious" news media, and so forth. In other words, practically no one can be taken at face value, regardless of his or her "platform."
Just glanced at Jerry Saltz's list for New York Mag of the most memorable art of the decade. I should have known better after that recent Richter review where Saltz blathered on about GR's "ultrapowerful technique," whatever that means. The list includes references to Matthew Barney as "mythic" and "colossal," Pipilotti Rist as "shaman," and Cindy Sherman as "timeless." But of course. Then there's the business about the Koons Puppy as the art work of the decade. I mean, I'm sorry, but for a presumably serious, let alone ostensibly major critic, this is simply WAY too embarrassing. You go, Jerry. Good little tool.
I have to admit, I was thinking of using Jerry's remarks about Gabriel Orozco in a future "This Week in Stupidity" entry. If I can get enough stupidities together.
In the meantime I'm working on a happy positive entry. Can't be a jerk all the time.
Saltz may not be the worst offender, and he may even mean well, but he's just not credible or respectable, certainly not to me. I know you like him, but he's part of the system and part of the problem. Of course, if he wasn't part of the problem, he could hardly be part of the system.
Oh, and Chris, if you want stupidities, the Saltz piece on the Koons Puppy is a gold mine. I was going to read it, but mere skimming proved unbearable. I cannot believe this guy has "major critic" status. Or rather, yes I can. It's like Koons having "major artist" status. It fits perfectly into the prevailing, uh, ethos.
Here's a little sample to get you started: "his [Koons's] work retains the essential ingredient that, to my mind, is necessary to all great art: strangeness."
Is that a card-carrying party member or what?
I've previously read that hosanna to Koons and I thought of picking on Jerry for it but didn't. I was too busy at that point (a couple of weeks ago now) picking on other people.
It may help to have met him and understand his delivery of a line like that. He's a little unserious and playful. When he writes some of the stuff he does I sort of hear him joking a bit. Unlike other critics -- like Hughes or even Schjeldahl -- Jerry really doesn't take himself or anything else seriously. He's just fucking around. How someone who is just fucking around could be elevated to his position is a mystery but I don't think he believes his own bullshit yet. He does sometimes say the opposite of what other art world people are thinking just to be oppositional, I think. Koons' star is setting, I suspect, and Jerry's hagiography is a way of marking that in his own way. That's my feeling, anyway.
Doesn't make it right or good, but it does change the flavor a bit.
Jerry certainly loves Matthew Barney and when he told us why (at that SVA lecture I'm always referring back to) I was flabbergasted -- it struck me as an ignorant and dopey reason to like anything. What he said was he watched this video of Barney sticking Vaseline in all his holes and when Barney got to his urethra, Jerry had an epiphany: He'd never thought of that as a hole! One: How does any male not think of the urethra as a hole? How do you get through forty years of life and find that surprising? Two: Even if that's true, how does communicating that to you make anything a good work of art?
Which leaves out my feeling upon hearing of a video where Matthew Barney inserts Vaseline in himself, which is this: Yuck.
Chris, if Saltz is just goofing or fucking around, which I can believe, what does that say about anybody who'd take him seriously? Obviously some people do, otherwise he wouldn't be an issue for discussion. But as I said, a joke of an artist like Koons goes with a joke of an art critic.
As for the Matthew Barney story, I hope, for Saltz's sake, that was just more goofing or fucking around. If it wasn't, the guy's simply an idiot, which I tend to doubt. I expect it's all part of a certain schtick which has proved successful enough to get him where he is. And the whole Barney Vaseline business is SO lame--it's like an "updated" knock-off of the Beuys fat business, which was already more than lame enough.