Paddy at AFC has a wonderful call to arms today that just makes me want to get on a soapbox and rant! She's basically calling it the Shutz effect or rather "Frank", which is seeping like puss into and onto so many canvases throughout the borough of Chelsea. More appropriately we should call it the Hunter College/Columbia template 2.0 . Or maybe just Painting for Dummies.AFC cites the recent Nicole Eisenman works, as well as Andre Ethier whom I don't know but by the looks of it is making works in Eisenman's studio or the reverse? An addition to this list could easily be the current Jackie Gendel show. The list of painters engaging in this bad painting exercise is long - at least in NYC . Chelsea is wallowing in shit bag aesthetics with drivelish concepts and a lust for infantilism of the most sophomoric and banal. Just check out PaintersNYC for a regular taste. More importantly, read the threads and you'll get more than your fair share of inane discourse. I'm not saying that these particular artists are empty(certainly not Shutz or Eisenman, I enjoy both) or completely stylistic opportunists but something is up and something is wrong. There does seem to be a very real trend especially among emerging or middish career painters. I'm not sure what that has to say about location, gender, age or the current art school trends but I concur with Paddy, its an underwhelming gimmick that was already tired in 1984. How many more '80's pastiches do we have to live through? Are we at 8th generation yet? Wake me when Carravaggio comes back in vogue. Why is this calculated painting style still considered brave? Its so status quo at this point, quite conservative actually when you think about the last 60 years. The recent fucking rad, bad painting crop feels like a collection of hollow style mongers and quite honestly do little more for the world than provide hipster wallpaper for gallery hopping.
Why does this irritate me so much you may ask? I ask that alot myself because there is certainly a hell of a lot more to upset one in the larger world. I'm sure many think I'm some kind of sentimentalist or traditionalist. Perhaps, but only if it applies and pushes the current discourse towards something tangible and meaningful for as many artists and viewers as possible. Something outside of style needs to be sought, quit quoting lame dead art and make something about this world. This work is already dated - mid/late 2000's. Quite simply, I feel cheated and looked down upon as a viewer and forget that I'm a practioner myself, a double whammy. I think for me there is a snide and selfish insularity to this aesthetic. Its dumb, frankly. Its lazy and corrupt at the core, a self congratulatory exercise that I think requires the minimum of the artist and asks a hell of lot more in return from the viewer to adjust their experience and intelligence by having to navigate false importance and swallow the pretzel logic of an inverted value system.
image: Andre Ethier
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25 comments:
amen and thanks for ranting. Not enough of that, and these paintings till won't go away.
Look I hate to go on the attack against any artist as a person, and this is certainly not that but a rant about the choices artist's make.
They will go away - falling apart wrapped in bubble on some shelf in a warehouse. Forgotten as quickly as they were made. Unfortunately more will crop up like young-republicans on campus.
¡viva la revolucion!
Yea, having just come back from vapid city Miami, I see a connection with the repetition in la machine. Crap paintings and crap beachfront condo's all come out of the same necessity. Buy into it (at the "affordable art fair/equal opportunity housing authority) as a construct of cultural meaning, then buy it and flip it and make a fast buck. Do fries come with that shake?
Amen!
You are right to point to the conservative bent of this style. It's a manner, and it should upset you.
You didn't become an artist, I assume, so that you could pump out bad-painting widgets for a couple of years straight out of MFA, when you were too naive to see the machine for what it is, and then get dumped like an NFL linebacker with a torn ligament with no long-term prospects and still in debt, just because you're no longer "fresh", or worse yet, maybe renegotiated what you were doing and try to make it meaningful?
The bad work is a symptom of a ridiculous system... the Old Navyization of contemporary art. Hold tight, highlow, correction's coming!
(It must, right? How much lamer can it get?)
Yes yes yes! How much lamer can it get? I dunno - look at Rick Santorum?
Seriously though, I can not believ for one moment that the majority of buyers of this kind of stuff care in the least about the actual work. The untrained eye knows it is crap too - its obvious to anyone, save the maker and the perhaps the gallerist who are both working so hard to be relevent/cool/chic that they can't see waht dorkfaces they actually are. Again, this get s back to the civic role of the artist and that squares with the economic necessities of survival as an artist. I still refuse to believe though, as Zach Feuer posits, that collectors are calling the shots on what gets sold - that they want this crap. I think both gallerist and collector are in some morbid dance of mutual denial as to the value of the cultural products they endorse - TOGETHER. The joke is on both but they will survive and the artist won't. Think about your local used CD bin as an analogy.
perhaps the angry Welshman has had an affect after so many years.
cjr wrote: Is that an Elvis Costello lyric?
Hahahahahaa!!!
very funny
Hey Chris, thanks for the comment. My experience has mostly mirrored your's. I love the simplicity of the IDEA of NYCPainters but in the end the content mostly sucks. It may simply speak to what is available out there or to tastes of the blogger, its hard to tell sometimes. I'm willing to concede that things get lost in j-peg but frankly, most of waht is discussed just ain't real painting. I'm sorry, I vote nay. If memory serves though, you generally have thoughtful commentary on the blogs you frequent. Feel free to hang out here.
6/22/2006
A good example of this shitty art can be seen Black and Whites new space over in Chelsea. God Awful!
I appreciate the rant, I really do, and I agree. I just have one question: What's good? Forgive me for not going back over your blog to see if you explain elsewhere. But I really would like to know: What's good?
Hey Chris -Thanks for the comment.
That is a big question and no I do not define "good". Its hard. I am thinking about that constantly within my own work of the work at large that I experience as a viewer. I am seriously thinking of running a couple of posts about it. Its on a lot of people's minds and the fact that it is such a question mark shows that there is a lot of confusion out there - more than there should be.
Hi High Low. Nice blog. Thanks for mentioning my blog. As far as what I post it has a lot to do with what is showing around town at the time of the post. Some of it speaks to my taste some of it not but I always try to post the best image I can find of that artist. I would love some suggestion to what you would like to see or what you consider real painting. Access is a problem I mainly get my images from gallery sites so I am always happy to learn about work else where.
Painter - thanks for dropping in. Like I said I love the simplicty of just an image a day and let 'em rip. Many times I'm into the artist. You are always going to be limited by what is being shown in the city - I'm well aware of the conundrum. We're all subjects of our own taste as well and then there is the jpeg vs. painting problem we're all aware of. I'll think about some suggestions. To be honest I wouldn't mind some historical paintings thrown in the mix to see what people feel and see how the currently shown paintings hold up. Even if those were limited to NY artists as opposed to international. The battle is fighting against all the sameness we're surrounded by.
I do wish people commenting on yer site would step up their game though - its a little obnoxious at a certain point - no fault of your efforts, but ya know?
Really Highlow, radical subjectivity is a total bugaboo for libertarians still ranting that all truth is individual. Of course it reached by consensus, there is no question about that. The question is really a matter of with whom are you going to concede, not what is ultimate good.
HLB sez:
That is a big question and no I do not define "good".
I don't mean I want you to define good, because that's just insane. I mean, give me an example of good. Obviously I'm not going to agree with you a hundred percent on anything -- who does? -- but I want to get an idea of what you think of as good.
For example -- if you've read my blog you know this, so forgive me if you've heard it before -- for example, I think Inka Essenhigh is really good. I think Madeline von Foerster is really good. I love Van Gogh and Rousseau. I like Chuck Close and Tom Wesselmann. Mark Kostabi is fun.
hey Chris, It would be insane - of course I feel insane on many days.
Look there are so many people I think are good - in all media, dead and alive. Here's a recent short list that have been "go to" artists when I'm in the heat of the studio battle.
Painters:
Neo Rauch,Anselm Keifer, Jenny Saville, Matthias Weiser. At times Peter Doig - Kristin Baker - Agnes Martin- Cy Twombly
A lot of Robert Frank/Eggleston too
I've been troubling over Ashes 77's comment, "The question is really a matter of with whom are you going to concede, not what is ultimate good." I believe it. But the which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg paradox had me twisting a mobius. We all agree that there can be no ultimate "Good" because that would, by definition, exclude something or someone. We are in no position to pass judgement. And yet. . . we want to connect to other humans. We want to share. We have to compare values. I love to compare and contrast the shapes of the clouds let's say. By doing this I develop taste. I need to define good and bad in order to have a dialogue. But ultimately my idea of "good" always seems to be tainted by my belief that my taste is relative. I am enchanted with the "radical subjectivity" that Ashes 77 refers to, and yet, I can never pull it off with conviction. Well, except for the radical conviction of Doubt. I guess truth isn't, (or can't) be an array of chaotic individual points, but rather clusters or packets of tendencies. Ideally these clusters are self aware and try not to pass judgement on other clusters, which need to exist. . . oh man.
I like Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly too.
S - I agree with what your saying especially with clusters or dense asscoiations working together to form a flexible and changing consensus.That being said I do find I have resistance to an over reaching relativism. I do think there is good work and bad work.
Just like good prose and bad prose. I'm never going to elevate Dan Brown to Faulkner just because he calls himself a writer. There is also a hell of a lot of middle ground,that is to say I think there can be subjectivity that is principled and applied and aware of its own tastes. No one wants fundamentalism or narrowness. We do have that ability to understand objective realities though tempered by our associative capabilities without it turning into an inquisition. I think this subjectivity is linked to a healthy doubt in the mediocrity that is often presented to us as great or important. But yes it all needs to exist, the good-bad-ugly but it needs realignment beacuse too much seems out of balance.
If "Blogger" wasn't acting-up for me tonight, I would change my template to read "Fish or Cut Bait, subjectivity that is principled and applied and aware of its own tastes". Point well taken. "No one wants fundamentalism or narrowness." And no one should logically want the other extreme. Oddly, I couldn't find an antonym for "fundamentalism".
"Broadness" comes almost close. What is too broad? Incomprehensive-alism? Too-tolerant-ism?
The middle ground will never have a hero. . .
Completely off thread, but focused on quality: What do you think of David Foster Wallace?
S- yeah what is up with blogger? I been having fits for weeks. Its seems.
I don't know the artist. I'll have to look him up and get back to you.
A fundamentalist would say a moderate is the opposite! lol
Of course!
I forgot!
Grey is the opposite of black and white.
DFW is a contemporary writer. Some people enjoy his writing, some people don't.
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