Rent By Bleeding Light

Barbie & Kehinde, 2015

     Art is much like dawn:  Darkness rent by bleeding light.  An illumination, whether literal or figurative, something revelatory to the eye, or the mind's eye.  And, as I've addressed here before, and has been argued since the first human scratched an image of a deer on the wall of a cave, art is subjective, everyone's a critic, and nothing riles up emotions like dissension on either or both of the previous two observations.  It's crazy really, it's like railing against the weather, you have no power over it. 
So and thus has a tempest in a teapot boiled over with a hatchet job published by the Village Voice recently about the Kehinde Wiley Brooklyn Museum retrospective.  Read the piece, it's nonsense.  While I'm not a fan of Wiley's factory-style produced works, (he employs a lot of assistants who do all of the background painting, with dubious results), none of what the VV piece claims is actually evidenced in his work.  Such as, the pervy nature of Wiley's renderings of young black men.  The operative word here is MEN, not children, and the portraits aren't even all that suggestive to slip into the realm of pervy.  Which leads one to believe that the author of the article is a homophobe.  So seldom does one come across a true dyed in the wool homophobe in the art world anymore that its'a  shock to the system when a publication as respected as the Village Voice gives precious space and ink to one.
Now, a much more even handed review of the  retrospective is up on the New York Times website.  Although, I don't know how much praise it is to be compared to a mash-up of Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Jeff Koons.  Jeff Koons!  The most reviled living artist I can think of.  Ah, Kehinde, you are breathing rarified air indeed.

Barbie & You Or Me

Barbie Roberts and Maria Lassnig in 'You or Me', Pittsburgh, 2014


This year the art world lost one of its boldest visionaries when Maria Lassnig died at the age of 94.  A towering genius of unrivaled talent, she explored techniques and themes more timid artists wouldn't dare attempt.  Never flinching in her desire to push boundaries and explore the human condition within her work, she was able to transcend the condescension of the term 'female artist' and was simply an 'artist'.  To say that she's influenced my work doesn't credit her enough with how deeply a chord she's struck.  She'll resonate well beyond her expiration date.
God's speed, Maria.

Art, O! Cruel Mistress

Art. The embodiment of truth and beauty, even and especially terrible truths and horrible beauty. How could it be otherwise? Art reflects the world. Here we have Can of Shit No. 5, created - or produced - by the self-taught Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni in1961. Of the 90 cans that Manzoni originally made and sold, 45 have exploded due to the extreme pressure manifested by the build up gas sealed therein. Having been subjected to shitty modern art, I find Manzoni's intent here to be a bit whimsical, especially since he sold all 90 cans at the going rate of gold per gram. I wasn't even born yet in 1961, but even tooling around the ether waiting to take corporeal form, I was amused by Manzoni's chutzpa. There is no more literal statement about what constitutes "art" in modern terms than a can of shit that costs as much as gold. More, now, as both museums and private collectors buy the stuff. I wouldn't pay a dime for it, but I'm artistically pedestrian that way. I'm a Philistine. A hack poseur floating around the periphery of the real geniuses tearing them to shreds with my exposed kitty claws at every opportunity!!!111!
And now, through time constraints, as I near my point, there's a difference, both artistically and intellectually between what Manzoni was attempting to do and what mindless shlock Jeff Koons exhibits. Am I angry and offended by Koons' boorish crap? No. There is nothing in his work to elicit much of a response from me. I mean, if I paid money to see it, then I might get angry and yell at one of the prison, er, museum guards, but just reading about him online and looking at pictures of his creations makes my inner Hello Kitty weep for all of the lost opportunity in his work. Unlike Manzoni, he seems to lack outrage, humor, and originality, not to mention theme. The best I can I surmise is that he's narcissistic (big surprise!), but not particularly self aware. At least not self aware in a useful way. Through my research into Koons I discovered that he's been sued, particularly by photographers, for artistic infringement several times and has lost most of the cases. I especially liked the cases he lost and then appealed only to have the Judge admonish him further when he lost again. I'd love to see Judge Judy rip him a new one!
NPR did a story on Koons' exhibit at Versailles today on Morning Edition. Two museum goers ended up in a heated argument in French over whether it's plastic garbage or brilliant modern art that challenged perceptions. It's been my experience that when someone in an argument over art condescendingly tells you that you simply don't know enough about art to recognize what you're looking at, and thereby are completely incapable of appreciating anything beyond four dogs playing poker with Elvis holding the baby Jesus, has lost the argument already and is afraid their dick will shrivel and rot unless they dismiss your entire existence and opinions out of hand. I call this theory: The Jennifer Gambit.