A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low. 763
Many art-worlders have an if-you-say-so approach to art: Everyone is so scared of missing out on the next hot artist that it’s never clear whether people are liking work because they like it or because other people do. Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses, and there are more Joneses than ever. 703
‘Untitled’ is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being. 917
It took me twenty years to get Steven Parrino’s work. From the time I first saw his art, in the mid-eighties, I almost always dismissed it as mannered, Romantic, formulaic, conceptualist-formalist heavy-metal boy-art abstraction. 1.85K
A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years, during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers. 624
If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which, for two months every other year, new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by. 763
Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books. 590
A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory, Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit, she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors’ homes, in galleries, on the walls of auction houses, and off the walls, in museum storage. 631
When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won’t miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the ‘Event Ocracy.’ All this flashy ‘art-fair art’ and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event. 700
Much good art got made while money ruled; I like a lot of it, and hardship and poverty aren’t virtues. The good news is that, since almost no one will be selling art, artists – especially emerging ones – won’t have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They’ll be able to experiment as much as they want. 674
The last time money left the art world, intrepid types maxed out their credit cards and opened galleries, and a few of them have become the best in the world. 679
It’s art that pushes against psychological and social expectations, that tries to transform decay into something generative, that is replicative in a baroque way, that isn’t about progress, and wants to – as Walt Whitman put it – ‘contain multitudes.’ 634
The giant white cube is now impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art. It preprograms a viewer’s journey, shifts the emphasis from process to product, and lacks individuality and openness. It’s not that art should be seen only in rutty bombed-out environments, but it should seem alive. 654
It’s great that New York has large spaces for art. But the enormous immaculate box has become a dated, even oppressive place. Many of these spaces were designed for sprawling installations, large paintings, and the Relational Aesthetics work of the past fifteen years. 692
Can space break? I mean the space of art galleries. Over the past 100 years, art galleries have gone from looking like Beaux Arts salons to simple storefronts to industrial lofts to the gleaming giant white cubes of Chelsea with their shiny concrete floors. 659
Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don’t seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste, momentary glitches in an artist’s work, or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times, however, these problems mean there’s something wrong with the art. 620
The New York art world readily proves people wrong. Just when folks say that things stink and flibbertigibbet critics wish the worst on us all because we’re not pure enough, good omens appear. 858
After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades – even if it’s now close to aesthetic kudzu. 2K
All of Koons’s best art – the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century’s signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory – has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy. 686
Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you’ll find it. It’s there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film. 592
