- But man can that guy talk about how much he, personally, loves the Dutch masters!
In the current, year-end issue of the The New Yorker, the magazine’s art critic, who is as a rule hostile to the point of contemptuous to all art evincing even the faintest familiarity with art history or criticism, closes his condescending rave (increasingly a speciality, he compliments modern installation artists or painters for the way their work, aesthetically offensive to him personally, wittily reflects the essentially bankrupt nature of modern art) of MoMA’s Gabriel Orozco retro with this:
Pleasure is the only trusty teacher and guarantor of seriousness in art. Why is that so easy to forget?
Well, because it’s not true.
And because, even if it were true—which, again, no—saying so aloud would mostly serve to give the incurious a further excuse to rigidify their already limited frame of reference.
As a cri de guerre stated unusually bluntly in the year-end double issue especially, this reads like a bitter parting salvo and statement of purpose from a guy who knows he’s just filed his last column. Christ, I hope so.
This is one time I think Peter got it right…well I guess his comment “if you spend more the 20 minutes your loitering” Urs Fischer at the New Museum show has now moved into the history of put-downs…but Im not so crazy about his likes and dislikes to much academic figure painting for me
I think hes changed the review I for the life me cant find this quote…as a matter of fact Id say he liked the show …which I found a bore but then that seems to be the point sort of a new take on Warhols turning negative to positive. Post Modern Theory to the rescue
Pleasure is the only trusty teacher and guarantor of seriousness in art. Why is that so easy to forget?