Recent Comments
Re: “Full Price at the Metropolitan Museum is a "Tourist Tax"!”
Yo yo pa is right. Suggested admission doesn't exist to subsidize New Yorkers.
That said, we should keep in mind that the Met is acquiring the Whitney's old building and unlike The Met and Cloisters that won't be on public land. That building may retain its admission price.
Re: “The Best Artist You've Never Heard Of”
Eh shit. I'll update the post. I followed you on instagram, but none of the pictures would load, so I thought it was public.
Re: “From Russia with Exasperation”
No Garage people involved. I read Russia was disorganized like this, but I'd also heard from a few of the speakers who'd worked in Russia before that this was particularly bad. Even the organizers thought it was bad.
Re: “On The Total Vacuity Of Richard Phillips”
Do your homework and then leave a comment. I'm not discussing this further until you've seen the show.
Re: “On The Total Vacuity Of Richard Phillips”
Phillips' appropriation aesthetic isn't similar to any Koons work I've written about. I think the porn stuff isn't bad, but part of what makes them interesting is the poses themselves, and Jeff's participation in the work. You don't see that kind of participation here, and while Phillips isn't a star himself so there's good reason he's not there, the result is that the work never feels particularly invested. That's a problem.
What we know about Lindsay Lohan does not vibrate with these paintings. Part of this is the subject itself; the fact that she frequently runs people over is not interesting, so what's a bad painting going to add to what we already know? Tuymans and Freud chose their subjects better and painted them better. If we look at the painting of Rice, Tuyman's loose brushwork and purposefully muted palette produce what should be a banal painting of someone we know to have a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience. That created a kind of "vibration" when I saw the painting in SF, and I think it works.
Finally, regarding Duchamp: if you want to make a big deal out of a sentence purposefully exaggerated for effect go right ahead. It's not relevant to the piece and I think anyone reading this post will know that.
Re: “On The Total Vacuity Of Richard Phillips”
@Hill I never mention Koons, Hirst, Prince, and Sherman in this post, so I don't know how I'm avowing them.
And, yes, I am aware that Duchamp allegedly had Stieglitz photograph a urinal (it's believed that particular urinal never existed), but who cares. The point is that Phillips is claiming to be a misunderstood genius, and we know that's not true.
Re: “On The Total Vacuity Of Richard Phillips”
Self aware vacuity isn't any different than vacuity, it's just dressed a little different.
Wealth that generates wealth isn't an idea, it's an observation.
That the show is basically impossible to take seriously from an artistic standpoint is a problem, but a lot of living contemporary artists show at Gagosian suffer from this. What's galling is that Phillips seems to think he's in the same league as Duchamp. It's just going to take a little bit of time for the rest of us to catch up with his bullshit. Give me a break.
