“I did not put the book together in the way a band might assemble a greatest hits package.” Instead, it’s an “idiosyncratic” collection that includes lesser-known artists, such as the now-defunct duo Wallace & Donohue, rather than, say, Jeff Koons.
Picture: "Changing My Tune" by Wallace & Donohue, 1980s.
Showing posts with label art criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art criticism. Show all posts
Monday, March 26, 2012
Not a Greatest Hits Package-- Bob Nickas
Friday, March 23, 2012
Dissing the Patrons of Art-- Bob Nickas 3/26
Bob Nickas, art critic who visits 3/26, has no problem biting the hand that feeds Art:
Wealthy and powerful people—and boring people, and famous people—use art and artists to legitimize themselves. Or they use culture to say, “Look how cultured I am. I gave all that money to the museum.” Or, “Look, I bought this painting for however many millions of dollars at that auction.” People in the art world, people around artists, they all do the same thing. They use art to advance themselves, to advance their careers, for fame, power, money, and all those things. The art world doesn’t function any differently from the business world, the banking world, the real estate world, the military, or politics. And all those people in banking and real estate? They’re all involved in art. And why are they involved in art? Because in banking and real estate, there are all these oversights. People can go to jail. People can pay fines. The art world is the only unregulated market of its kind. I mean, what are the other unregulated markets? Drugs, arms, and slavery? Prostitution and gambling? Art is the only white-collar, legitimized market that is completely unregulated. There are no penalties. The only thing that you’ll ever get caught for is tax evasion.
Read the interview with Jesse Pearson in Vice.
Monday, March 19, 2012
"Any Similarity is Coincidental"
"This is an artwork by Richard Prince. Any similarity to a book is coincidental and not intended by the artist."
Copyright-wronging contemporary artist Richard Prince features the above disclaimer on his controversial "sculpture," a precise facsimile edition of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, with the attribution, "a novel by Richard Prince."
Bob Nickas, art critic and curator who visits on Monday, March 26th, writes about Prince and Salinger, their respective works of art and their various legal battles, in Vice.
Friday, March 16, 2012
See the Abstract Show Before Visit With Bob Nickas
You may wish to visit "Material Occupation," the UAlbany Art Museum's current exhibit on contemporary abstract art, in advance of a Bob Nickas's visit on Monday, March 26th.
The contrarian art critic and curator is widely regarded as America's leading authority on recent abstract art. He is also the author of the highly praised 2009 book, Painting Abstraction.
The reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle called it, "a wild ride of a reference book.” The New York Times called it, “a lively survey… a useful tool in forming a sharper, broader sense of what is going on in the world of abstract painting.”
"Material Occupation" runs through April 7, 2012.
"The artists represented in Material Occupation challenge the idea that abstraction is a rarified concept that bears little relation to everyday experience. Using familiar patterns, structures, designs, and systems, these artists explore the cultural associations inherent in prosaic materials. Traditional art-making gestures are replaced by actions equated with manual labor, such as staining, pasting, bleaching, mending, stretching, taping, daubing, recycling, and tearing. Drawing on a wide range of materials and references, these artists apply a keen eye and a steady hand as they transform house paint, thread, old and newly woven fabric, industrial tape, and other ordinary materials into poetic abstract forms. The decorative, the contemplative, and the marginalized thus take precedence in work that proposes an alternative relationship to Modernist abstraction." More.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
What is Theft? What is Art? What is Theft of Art?
"Is there anything worse than being sued? How about being sued and losing. No, even worse than that. What about never having the chance to sue someone? Exactly. Because the way it used to be, the worst that could happen was that someone took your work away from you, and then profited at your expense. Nowadays, if your career could use a real boost, you can't ask for a more golden opportunity than the chance to take someone to court."
Bob Nickas, art critic and curator who visits Monday 3/26, talks on Vice.com about the lawsuit of French photographer Peter Cariou against artist Richard Prince, which the New York Times has called "one of the most closely watched copyright cases ever to rattle the world of fine art."
Nickas writes a regular column for Vice: "KOMP-LAINT DEPT." Read more.
Photo: Prince's collage "Inquisition" which appropriates and alters Cariou's photographs of Rastafarians.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Writing About Abstract Painting
Art critic and curator Bob Nickas, who visits on March 26, talks about the meaning of contemporary abstract painting in Art in America:
PENN: What is it about abstract painting that compels you to write about it today?
NICKAS: Ad Reinhardt once said that it's more difficult to write about abstract painting than any other kind of painting because it's content is not in its subject matter but in the actual painting activity. I agree, but you have to keep in mind that he wrote this in 1943. Abstract painting today often has a subject beyond itself. When Wayne Gonzales makes a painting that, seen up close, is a proliferation of overlaid gray dots and ovals, but from a distance coheres as an aerial view of the Pentagon, he offers an image of power and the war. When Steven Parrino mis-stretches a large expanse of metallic silver canvas and titles it Death in America, he's not simply offering the world another shiny monochrome. This is a work that reminds us of abstraction's privileged relation to language. The very same painting, given a neutral title, or untitled, is simply not the same painting. Reinhardt's text posits abstraction against illustration. To my mind, there is absolutely nothing compelling about illustration. We all make our choices.
Read the 2009 interview in Art in America magazine.
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