Small Texas towns are easy to stereotype, and often, those generalizations prove themselves to be true. Conservative politics, high school football, and abundant red meat are just a few that come to mind. Last weekend I was fortunate to be able and spend a number of days in just this kind of town installing an [...]
When it comes to art, using the word ‘crisis’ is always a massive overstatement. Between the crises in painting, criticism, and photography you’d think that art was in some real trouble. But as it turns out, much like the recent debt ceiling crisis, these cultural predicaments are just as manufactured. It’s been argued that there [...]
Patience, in the traditional sense, is a virtue I’m not fortunate enough to possess. So much so that as a child I was set down and made to build model airplanes as a way to try and teach me its value. Needless to say, trying to glue all of the parts together within a ten [...]
Its time to pour yourself a cocktail, slather on some sunscreen, and break out that worn copy of Valley Of The Dolls. The art world, having lovingly adopted the academic calendar, is on holiday. Jet-setters have embarked to Venice or The Hamptons, galleries are hanging the obligatory group exhibitions, and the steady drumbeat of events [...]
Have you ever noticed than when people look at abstract paintings they’re always peeking around the edges? Clearly the painter has left some secret nugget of wisdom on the sides of the canvas that must be ascertained in order to arrive at a place of complete understanding. Clement Greenberg did hammer the importance of flat [...]
Who would’ve thought I’d ever be shilling for Texas, with a glass half-full at that? But having recently spent some time back in The Bayou City that’s exactly what I’m about to do. Distance lends itself to a certain amount of objectivity. It also lets one stay out of the back-biting and other acts of [...]
‘Tis the season to hand out financial advice. There isn’t a rock in existence under which we could live and not hear about the dismal state of the economy, how to budget, or the slash and burn fever spreading like syphilis through arts, education, and entitlement programs. Contemporary art is in an awkward position when [...]
Artists have a hard time organizing. We don’t have a union to bust, don’t have annual conferences, and it’s not all that shocking. Take a bunch of individualistic, over-worked, buck-the-system kind of people and chances are they aren’t going to want to join a club, and who can blame them? For a couple of years [...]
Sequels are never as good as the original, but since when has that ever stopped anyone? (To read Part I, click here.) Lack of respect, a turgid definition of productivity, vapid commercialism, and the notion that artists are unemployed slackers are just a few of the hurdles art faces. (Case in point, yesterday morning on [...]
‘So, what do you do?’ Gulp, do I say artist, professor, writer, lawyer? One of these things is not like the other. Faced with this inevitable question I typically squirm. There are far worse things to say than ‘artist,’ but I’ve been conditioned by years of lackluster responses and the ineludible follow-up, ‘so, what do [...]
‘It was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing’ – Anon., ‘The Richard Mutt Case,’ 1917. Who hasn’t copied something? Dress it up with whatever word you’d like, sampling, stealing, reproduction, or, if you want to flex your theoretical muscles, pastiche, quotation, or appropriation. I’m going with the last one. The recent case, Cariou v. Prince, [...]
Excuse my French. Yesterday while thumbing through my book shelves I came across a number of great little exhibition catalogs. One from back in1997. After some browsing, in an effort to be fair, I opened my internet browser and went through my bookmarks. Since these are the internet equivalent of a bookshelf, I clicked [...]
Let’s just call this one an icebreaker. There’s a saying about putting your best foot forward, but I am waffling about just which one that is. A proper entry should be full of rhetorical flourishes, binary fluffing, and one-line stunners, followed by a thoughtful and redemptive conclusion; think This American Life minus the quirky background [...]
