On Paul Thek
Not to be overly Thek-nical , but here is a 2.5 inch pencil rendering of a brain from 1964. It doesn’t have to be the size of a vast, sparkling (sterling) ruby to be
View ArticleArtist-Assistant Relationships
Since David Hockney's 23-year-old assistant Dominic Elliott recently died, a spate of articles on artist-assistant relationships emerged. The cause of his death still remains a mystery, though one...
View ArticleTilda’s Box
I don't get the Tilda-Swinton-sleeping-in-a-box thing at MoMA, NY. Well, I do but its depressing. Why give away valuable museum real estate to a non-artist? Anyway, James Franco has that territory...
View ArticleMarket Moaning
A fistful of art market writers have gone on record recoiling against the market and then quitting and now a dealer drones on how she doesn’t want to deal. I hate to break
View ArticleResolute Road
Guesting in a place where they must put short people on (tall) pedestals with waist high street signs and plenty of time to ruminate. Here I am on Resolute Road feeling as unyielding as
View ArticleThe Blake & Jerry Show
Beuys said everyone is an artist, and now Jerry Saltz states (complains?) now everyone is a writer, a concept he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with. Isn't that a good thing? In the age
View ArticleThe WWW: World Wide Warhol
Warhol, whose work presciently pointed the extent to which we like our pictures and pennies to proliferate (in perpetuity if possible), is changing the paradigm of how we pull together art, still. Even
View ArticleMore Art World Discontent
We live in a time of increasing art world discontent and disillusionment with more than a handful of critics and dealers bowing out from art for sentiments that could only be defined as anti-market.
View ArticleFrench Fried
French fried: the whole country will pay the price for the government's unilateral attack against the wealthy of french society. The ROW (rest of world) will benefit from the narrow-minded myopia of...
View ArticleTrans(gressive) Materialism
There was the Transavantgarde (beyond the avant-garde) and today we are faced with a period that could only be described as Trans(gressive) Materialism, not beyond anything other than focusing too...
View ArticleHaacke’s portrait of Margaret Thatcher
Duchamp said art has a shelf life and apparently so does meaning. When the Tate exhibited Haacke’s portrait of Margaret Thatcher (R.I.P.) in 1984 with some broken plates depicting the Saatchi Brothers...
View ArticleOn Graham Ovenden
AA Gill defends artist Graham Ovenden a painter of provocative little girls and a recently convicted pedophile, and then calls for the Tate’s Nicholas Serota to be fired for voluntarily refusing to
View ArticleYou Can Ring My Bell! At an Art World Quiz Show
It was time for Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s to perform, but he wasn’t conducting an auction. “Which artist directed the video for David Bowie’s recent single ‘Where are we now?’” he asked with...
View ArticleLong Live the Difference! On Carlo Mollino
Carlo Mollino, 1905 – 1973, an artist, architect, occultist, and designer of furniture and a racecar. Today the snooty art world would have turned its collective nose up and labeled him a dilettante...
View ArticleCollectors as Parasites
Duchamp said: “Collectors are ‘parasites’ of a sort. I like them very much because they are very nice people, but that has nothing to do with their essential quality, which is to be a
View ArticleCopyright-on! Or rather, Copy Write-Off!
On appeal, Richard Prince won the right to rip off Patrick Cariou with impunity (i.e. for free), though some 5 of the 30 images were remanded back to district court to determine if
View ArticleCarlo Mollino: Skill-ettante
Carlo Mollino was born in Turin in 1905 and died in 1973 while still professionally active. The range of his activities miraculously and magically spanned the design of buildings (inside and out),...
View ArticleI admit to loving fairs
Roberta Smith rarely misses the mark (if I may) but she does in her Frieze piece which merely physically describes a checklist of artists and ends on the sour note, pining for
View ArticleNew York Art Lobotomy (rough draft)
Fairs have come to take up such a signficant portion of how I view art that it can get confusing, though I admit that I prefer them to the
View ArticleWriting on the wall
Josh Baer called a top. New York dealer Roland Augustine said We’re pretty close to the top now, so I think it will plateau soon. Followed by today's headlines: The Highest Total in
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