Tyler Green writes in Portfolio that Christie's will try its hand at selling at auction Richard Neutra's 1946 Kaufmann House. Sometimes called the Kaufmann Desert House, the modest Modernist resort in Palm Springs, California, was restored in the 1990s to its original design. A detail from Green's article:
Crosby Doe, a Los Angeles-based real estate agent who specializes in properties by prominent architects, says that the market for California midcentury Modern architects such as John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, R.M. Schindler, and Neutra is booming. "I liken it to the stock market," says Doe. "When the real estate market is bad, these are the blue chips that people still go out and buy."Sounds a lot like what people say about the art market, too.
Novel or not, architecture's entry into the high-water mark world of arts and luxuries auctions should steer emphasis toward provenance and original designs. No additions by Barry Manilow after the original owner leaves. This is a good sign for architecture preservationists.
There's a comical panel in Amazing Fantasy #15 in which the authors essentially beg the reader to take a chance on this Spider-Man creation they're testing out. Check it out at the Library of Congress blog, where it's announced that an anonymous donor just gave the library Steve Ditko's original art for that issue.
(via cath)
Here is the Harvard Crimson, comparing Yale's Aliza Shvarts's to Cornel West, a tenured professor who had the audacity to record a rap album. I'd expect that fellow students would take more seriously issues of academic freedom and institutional incursions into student speech (indeed, students are surely better placed to talk about it than me) and so it's disappointing to see the columnist mount a narrative critique of "sociopolitical progressivism" as manifested in a work that neither she nor anyone else has seen because the school has censored it. To read about the institutional dimension, you must turn to the august American Prospect, where Dana Goldstein has my back.
It only occurred to me this morning to dial up Yale's art and art history journal to see whether it had anything to say about the matter. A quick look at the Dimensions blog finds students who, as you might expect, would like to steer the debate toward context. Interestingly enough, on the Dimensions contact page is an image of a sculpture by Shvarts, the materials of which are plaster, vaseline, towels, rubber bands, and latex gloves. That would seem to suggest thematic continuity in the artist's work, the possibility of which her critics, the Crimson included, have dismissed. But who can say? The work will not be seen, not even by her fellow students, who lament, "[s]ince we'll never see it, we'll never know what she really did, or even what she intended to install, and that is the biggest ambiguity of all."
So I've mounted a defense of Yale student Aliza Shvarts's controversial art project involving induced abortions over at the Guardian. Or rather, I'm criticizing Yale's response to the outrage that the project has predictably (and reasonably) provoked. The art, nothing doing: I haven't seen it, I don't know.
Suffice it to say, Guardian readers are not convinced.
Mark Cameron Boyd has a must-read epistemic critique of Zwirner & Wirth's recreation of Dan Flavin's epic 1964 Green Gallery exhibit—the first in which he showed nothing but fluorescent-light "propositions". One detail that Boyd has not gotten quite right: The lights that the Flavin estate uses today are indistinguishable from those he used nearly 50 years ago. As Greg Allen wrote in his NYT piece that everyone else wishes they'd thought to write, the bulbs Flavin used have taken on an artifact quality that he never intended while, at the same time, disappeared from manufacturers' everyday production. Allen mentioned last month, though, that despite the change in GE's fluorescent formula, the Flavin estate still had original bulbs as recently as 2004 and has "documented the chemical formulation of the coating of each color of light bulb, and when it needs more, it has them fabricated in small batches." In a broad epistemic sense, these special-order lights aren't the same as the ones anyone could acquire through the 1980s, but the color and light are precisely the same.
The press for Zwirner & Wirth's redux show has been, shall we say, glowing. ("The freshest, most challenging and uplifting exhibition in town," says R.C. Baker.) I'm inclined to cross my arms and harumph on the sidelines with Boyd: As a show that recreates the original and revolutionary 1964 experience, it's thorny for all the reasons Boyd mentions—basically, it's site-specific installation set in a whole new situation. But as a show that strives instead to offer a historical experience, it comes quick on the heels of a similar effort that visited New York, Fort Worth, and the District. Needless to say, it's a testament to the artist's lasting vision that mounting his work invariably brings up difficult issues.
I hadn't realized that the new Camel cigarettes design that you see around is meant to be a permanent change. I suppose in 10 years they'll change it back and we'll all marvel. Here's hoping that Brand New is around to record the shift. Perhaps more addictive than smoking, the Brand New blog records changes in corporate logo design—and observes rightly that "Besides fragrances and perfumes, one of the few categories that has amazingly maintained a level of graphic sophistication and restraint is cigarette packaging. From the underrated simplicity of Marlboro, to the indefatigable Lucky Strike, to the sophisticated Gauloises, cigarette packs are remarkably simple."
You have to see the sweetheart note tucked in the acknowledgments of Kieran Healy's Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs. How nice. I doubt the book's going to get him out of giving her his kidneys or what have you if it comes to that tho.
Promise I'm not some sap-craved acknowledgments reader—it came up in comments over at Edge of the American West.
For the Guardian, G.p friend and colleague Sasha Belenky has written a piece that touches on Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge's Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out in a larger examination of artists working today who romanticize radicalism. Belenksy takes the long view:
The consequences of race riots and the counterculture movement are still being felt, but these works don't focus on the present. Instead, they evoke nostalgia for a revolution that was never fully realised and disappointment at the feebleness of today's political activism. In the exhibition's catalogue, Rebecca Solnit argues that American youth have given up on the 60s-era dream of social revolution in favour of more personal steps like consuming local farm produce or purchasing hybrid cars - small decisions that will nevertheless change society gradually. Her optimism doesn't seem to be shared by the artists in the show.Often the talk about political art and its recent shortcomings, real and perceived, focuses on methods and aesthetics. What has been discussed less frequently (if at all) is the sort of grand tectonic shifts in the political/curtural landscape. Belensky is arguing in brief that today, political art comes up lacking because political protest takes other forms—namely, market decisions that emphasize personal virtue. One example that immediately comes to mind is this weekend's New York Times Magazine piece on reducing your personal carbon footprint.
Yglesias succinctly explains exactly why this kind of thinking is counterproductive:
Not only are these kind of "personal virtue" efforts insufficient to tackling the challenge of global warming, I think talking about them too much is actually counterproductive. The calculations involved in figuring out the aggregate carbon impact of this or that are just far too difficult for anyone to carry out. What's more, it's generally not going to be possible for a single person through his or her own exertions to really bring about dramatic cuts, and the last thing you need is people sitting around thinking "I drive a Prius, I've done my part" and then not voting the right way or otherwise being disengaged from the political process.Note, also, that Dick Cheney and like-minded conservatives have adopted the "personal virtue" language as a way of dismissing energy regulation, conservation, and so forth, since folks can just buy a Prius if they'd like to save the world.Beyond all that, the market in trendy "green" products has certain counterproductive effects -- it creates a profitable niche market in expensive green-branded goods that most people can't afford and lowers the price of carbon-intensive goods. But in a fundamental sense, the only way to make a green economy work is to make carbon-intensive goods expensive not render them stigmatized and uncool, which should, in tandem, help spur the development of more sustainable alternatives for a not-particularly-cool-or-trendy mass market.
No, I'm not a newly minted commercial curator. I have no financial stake in Christine Gray's paintings. For reasons that will be clear once my exhibition essay is available online (or alternatively, when you see the show), I think that her work is smart and significant and I hoped to introduce her to East Coast audiences. In the interest of avoiding impropriety or its appearance, it will be some time before I review Project 4 shows. In the meantime, if panels or happy hours are convened to discuss the matter I'd love to attend.
As it happens, Gray is now teaching painting at VCU and so I imagine that the District will be seeing more of her work in the future.
Christine Gray, If It's Yellow, 2007.
IKEA furnishes Japanese commuter rail. I would favor the Tokyoification of the Metro, for sure. The experience of commuting through heavily trafficked stations is already so intense, what's a little visual pollution?
The upkeep logistics are a mystery to me: Is IKEA going to furnish the relevant metro authority with a steady supply of Klippans so that the train continues to serve as a good advertisement? Is there any furniture company after IKEA (maybe Muji?) whose furniture is cheap enough to make this sort of campaign feasible? I bet a C&B Line would be a lot more comfortable than a Yellow Line.
(Courtesy of Matthew Langley)
The new-to-me Chicago Art Blog takes up the case against the Washington Post's writeup of Amy Sillman's Hirshhorn show by Michael O'Sullivan. Fair enough—as I said before, O'Sullivan's review struck me as inaccurate and nothing more than that.
In fact the Post's major odd turn with this article was not assigning it to Blake Gopnik in the first place. Gopnik has not to my knowledge told readers that painting is dead. But in 2004 he wrote an essay that plainly suggested that death's just a heartbeat away. Given his argument on the situation of painting, I imagine that those readers who have been following along would like to know whether a show like Sillman's confirms or disproves his prejudices.
Christine Gray, Pat Match Stand, 2008.
Christine Gray's show at Project 4 opens on Saturday. I curated the show, though that's a word I'll use lightly, since the artist knew what she wanted to do when I approached her and did exactly that. I think her work represents an incredible culmination of considered study and practice, and it's my pleasure to introduce her to the area. (She's now teaching painting at VCU, so I imagine area readers will be seeing more of her.)
For more, you'll have to read the essay. (I'll link it when it's available.) The opening's on Saturday from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
One story I've always kicked around but never put to pen and paper concerns a beloved piece of art that turns out to be a fake—and the political and professional cataclysms that cascade from the revelation. As it happens, truth may be stranger than fiction. Questions have been raised about Goya's El Coloso:
Doubts were first cast on El Coloso's authenticity — and that of another celebrated Goya work, La Lechera de Burdeos (The milkmaid of Bordeaux) — by the British Goya specialist Juliet Wilson-Barreau, a member of the scientific committee that organised the Prado's new exhibition.Artinfo notes the weak sauce that the Prado is feeding the Independent ("Citing a lack of energy and bad display"), as does Tyler Green and The Medium."The works lack energy and a good display within the framework of the painting, faults that are completely abnormal in the trajectory of Goya," Ms Wilson-Barreau wrote in Spain's art review El Periodico del Arte in April 2001. Giving El Coloso the definitive thumbs down, she added: "Almost all the specialists are in agreement that it is not by Goya." Ms Wilson-Barreau's doubts were shared by Manuela Mena, the Prado's senior Goya expert and curator of the show which opens tomorrow.
However, they were furiously dismissed at the time by the Prado's then director, Fernando Checa, who insisted both works were authentic. A year later, Nigel Glendinning, professor of art history at London University, wrote an academic study robustly defending the painting's authenticity. Almost nothing further was heard about the disputed El Coloso until this week, when it emerged that the canvas was excluded from the forthcoming celebration of Goya's war paintings.
Why would the Prado not clean the painting and come clean on its provenance? Politics, it would seem, are stranger than truth, science, or fiction.
Former director Checa came to his office when his predecessor announced the discovery of a significant new Goya—only to be discredited by the Prado's own archives, which listed the work as a major painting by a minor artist.
Checa himself left the museum after former Spanish defense minister Eduardo Serra staged a coup in 2001, quite literally taking the director's office for himself. Serra supplanted Checa from his position as chair of the Patronato (the Prado's board), a position to which Serra was appointed in 1999 by José María Aznar.
Having successfully obtained the reigns at the Prado, he had trouble handing them over at first. Serra was unable to persuade Miguel Zuguza to take the position as director at the end of 2001; various accounts have it that Serra then offered the position to Jesús Urrea, only to rescind it when Zugaza announced publicly that he would be taking the job, thereby putting Urrea's nomination (if not his very brief career as director) to rest.
With the election of Zapatero and the Socialist Party in 2004, the conservatives were out and with them, Serra. Rodrigo Uría replaced him on the Patronato. When Uría died three years later, Plácido Arango, by accounts a much more powerful figure, was appointed.
From 2001 to the opening of "Goya in Times of War" today, there has been plenty of opportunity to publish the findings. As director Zugaza told the Independent, "Our knowledge of Goya's work has advanced greatly in recent years, and doubts over the attribution of El Coloso are widely accepted by the museum's scientific team." But the political will to own up to an embarrassment? Apparently lacking. The concern was originally published in 2001, when then-director Checa squashed it. It would seem reasonable to count Checa among the "specialists" in a position to speak about the provenance of a Goya, so I'm inclined to view Wilson-Barreau's statement with some suspicion—although given his tenuous hold over his administration, Checa was in no place to incur any negative press.
Why haven't those findings been made public—or even investigated—since? As London University professor Nigel Glendinning (and Coloso defender) asks, "If the museum doesn't like it, they should tell us why." But what they really don't like is public embarrassment: It seems that the Prado is more interested in the reputation of the Prado than the reputation of El Coloso. If political currents have not afforded an ideal opportunity to discuss this work's provenance by now, when will they?
Speaking of Goya and the war between the Spanish and the French, the government of France proposes to pay citizens to take an interest in French art. Advantage: Spain.
In its rogues gallery of right-wing bloggers, the Village Voice numbers the split on Megan McArdle as 60-percent stupid, 40-percent evil. This is an error. McMegan is 0-percent stupid and refuses to do good, a distinction and a difference.
Elsewhere among famous female friends of mine: For the New Yorker, Ariel Levy quotes "one blogger"—one said uncredited blogger being Ann Friedman. This is an omission. Ann Friedman's name is her name!
Ross says that Chelsea doesn't need to answer questions about Monica but that Hillary does. In fact he says that Bill's prior infidelities are "remarkably pertinent" to her campaign. My immediate reaction is to dismiss this concern: The President's peccadilloes never amounted to an illegal activity, endangered national security, or slowed the markets. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I can't think of one single question to ask about the Clintons' marital life that would inform my vote. Maybe Ross will offer three questions the answers to which ought to matter to Democratic voters in the primary or American voters in the general.
Last month in the Washington Business Journal, Erin Killian and Melissa Castro reported that District Councilman Jack Evans decided to drop legislation exempting churches from historic designations—a dead giveaway to the Third Church of Christ, Science, whose building at 900 16th St. NW is the subject of some controversy. (Background here and here.) A detail from the WBJ report caught my eye:
The preservation board then designated the church as a historic landmark despite the congregation's opposition. In order to redevelop the land and build a new chapel, the church and ICG Properties are seeking a demolition permit, which is scheduled for a March 27 hearing before the preservation board.Why should Dupont Circle residents care? The building is two blocks from the White House, nearly a mile from Dupont. I seem to recall the same residents raising a stink when it was announced that a high-rise would be built at 14th and U Streets NW—which is also not Dupont Circle.A number of Dupont Circle residents are also in favor of tearing down the church, Evans said.
Image courtesy of Dalylab
Today my American Prospect article about Spiral Jetty and oil drilling is the lede on the home page, which means you can read it for free now.
Also, Kyle Winslow of TAP has a Q&A with artist Nancy Holt and Friends of Great Salt Lake director Lynn de Freitas that further explores topics raised by the piece. And if after all that you're still hunkering for a couple more paragraphs on the matter, you can read here about where things stand as of today. Here's a hint: Utah may not end up deciding matters after all. Click click.
It's not often that the Concho Valley region makes national news—better that it hadn't. San Angelo is home to many generations of (monogamous) Capps families.
Becky Alprin, Melissa Dickenson, Dawn Gavin, Geoff Grace, Maren Hassinger, and Molly Springfield. The $25,000 award will be named in July. Much more info at Bmoreart.
The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers asks Artnet editor Walter Robinson why he allowed Artnet critic Charlie "Charlie's Angels" Finch to review a show of his paintings for, yes, Artnet. Robinson called Edgers a "dweeb". Edgers goes up the ladder to Artnet president Bill Fine, who says, effectively, "meh". This, in response to a review that Finch concludes by imploring readers to "journey over to Metro Pictures and pick up a painting."
Zero credibility.
Editor Sarah Hromack of Curbed SF notes a clever feature the site used to cover the Olympic torch passing through her town (and the associated Chinese and Tibetan protests): Twitter. Seems like a no-brainer. I didn't realize that cities outside the District even knew about these things.
G.p pal Genevieve Smith has a piece in Portfolio on an upcoming Christie's auction that will include a major Clyfford Still painting, 1946 [PH-182]:
Given the rarity of such an event, one might expect a startlingly high price for 1946. Yet the current record holder, 1947-R-no. 1, which was auctioned in November 2006, fetched a relatively paltry $21.3 million. Christie's has priced 1946 (PH-182) at $8 million to $12 million. But "it could very well exceed our estimates," says Christie’s senior contemporary art specialist Robert Manley, overseer of both sales.Read the whole thing for more on Still's commercial history. As far as valuation is concerned, there's a perfect storm of anticipation about Still's never-before-seen work and a "relaxing" of the art market, with speculation declining and trust in reliable figures driving sales. (More on that later.)Still's prices have lagged in part because there's been such a limited supply of his work to fuel interest. At his death, in 1980, only 150 of Still's paintings were in circulation—most in permanent museum collections, with as few as 25 in private hands. "They are Vermeer rare," says Dean Sobel, director of the new Clyfford Still Museum, which will open in Denver in 2010.
[ . . . ]
The Denver Art Museum previewed a selection from Still's estate last summer, marking the first time many art historians and collectors laid eyes on some of his major works. The show was so popular, drawing 100,000 visitors, that the museum extended it through November.
The upcoming Christie's sale will be the first since the Denver preview, and though it certainly won't be the last, the sale will prove whether it whetted collectors' appetites for more. While the 13 works in the preview, like the rest of the estate, will never be up for sale, the attention the museum will bring to Still's work might mean that the timing is right to invest in a piece like 1946.
Aesthetically speaking the timing is "right" for Still, too. It always seems to be. One decade after another, in context, his work continues to be important but moreover abundantly relevant.
How is that Cory Arcangel's dystopian possibility isn't realized all the time?
While Sommer was away on vacation, a friend of ours emailed the both of us and a dozen other people about plans for a party. I, and I assume everyone on else on the thread, received Sommer's automatic out-of-the-office response. No problem. But if another person had set up his email to reply automatically, would we be stuck in the dread loop?
I don't believe Weingarten got a Pulitzer for this. I still remember thinking how silly it is when I read it the first time. Weingarten set this up like an experiment—how much will you pay to hear a world-famous classical musician if you aren't told he's a world-famous classical musician?
But the experiment trades on a second variable, too, though Weingarten doesn't recognize it: How much would you pay, etc. etc., during your rush-hour commute as opposed to during your after-dinner hour in which you enjoy leisurely pursuits?
Why, nothing at all, because you're on your way to work, and you like to think about the coming day or you like to read the news, because you don't like art before you've had coffee, because you're running late, because you hate it when people are standing around obstructing your perfect route to the metro, because you don't like sounds in the morning, because if you had your dithers you'd just be back in bed not seeing or hearing anything. Mostly because you're on your way to work, though.
Meanwhile, Weingarten gets points for illustrating the notion that he failed to prove in print, i.e., that there's a little bit of fiction behind all things. Subtract the stunt, and this profile doesn't garner the attention that it did. I suppose that is an accomplishment but a journalism that considers the art itself first and foremost does not do so as "an experiment in context, perception and priorities."
UPDATE: Does this make me the grumpiest reader in America? I suppose so, but really, have any of you ever used the Metro? The Gallery Place transfer I used to have to make every morning for my commute would fill me with thoughts of murder. Even thinking about it on the walk to the Metro would make me irritable. I kept my head down and disregarded other riders as best as I was able and expected the same of everyone around me.
Weingarten and Bell find an unsuspecting, captive audience at their worst, and they respond by doing as obligations and circumstances would have them do. What did these guys think would happen?
Why, just this morning I was discussing with a friend the benefits of membership at the Tate. An excellent club space and view for members, quality museums of course, but also association with BP and its annual rolling programme of events. BP Saturday looks good to me!
Absolutly cooler than all those other counterfactuals. Here I have to slip in a plug for the award-winning, handcrafted, Austin-original Tito's vodka.
You have only until Sunday to see young artist Benjamin Jurgensen's BFA senior thesis project, "we are will smith, or whatever", at the Corcoran, but I recommend that fans of Matthew Barney, Jessica Stockholder, and Banks Violette as well as those simply curious about young talent in the District check it out and see for yourself. I don't see all the BFA/MFA shows by any means (for example, I've seen zero so far this spring), but Jurgensen's shown work around town and it sticks out in recent memory among young graduating artists.
His sculpture is accessible, almost to a fault: some familiar compositional strategies presented in a familiar medium (MDF). Yet I don't see compromise in his work for the sake of broad appeal.
Benjamin Jurgensen, put we to your ear and hear yesteryear's ocean, mute affairs, mortarboards, merman graduate shit, this is just future love like water dripping down her inner thigh, teardrops as diluted thoughts filtered through the mainstream, twenty thing-a-ma-bobs, treasure troves, spear-fishing, love's fragile future only safe speaking through cartoon thought bubbles and coral thieves, lured into the deepest oceans of fantasy, flipping fins, marquees wash up on shore, legs required in the seas of change, reprimanded daughters, breathing the same air, just done differently, 2008.
Benjamin Jurgensen, cell phone tower disguised as structural column, 2008.
Benjamin Jurgensen, everyting crash, this is a chaos race, not your typical dark skinned disney villains, 2008.
The least that can be said is that it's a coherent sculpture show, a pleasant surprise for a thesis exhibition. I imagine I'll have more to write about when Jurgensen has a solo at Meat Market in a few weeks.
Courtland Milloy, if you're so damned opposed to a man smashing his penis with rocks, why won't you support HPV vaccination? We all wish the world were a disease-free place, but wishin's just wishin'—it's time you considered the bottom line about the world we live in. Even the most enlightened sex education isn't good enough when there are women's lives and men's penises on the line and curbing mortality is a real possibility. And clearly enlightened sex education isn't in the cards now—the best anyone can hope for is that the Bush administration's strenuous public support for abstinence education hasn't permanently burned Dick Cheney's scowling visage onto so many young retinas that we wind up with a Children of Men–style population meltdown. Maybe after the 2008 election? America is in some ways growing more liberal, but Silda Spitzer will take Elliott back in her bedroom before we, as a nation, are in the mood for reliable sex education in all our public schools.
But support for HPV vaccination, at least, is widespread, and the opposition (yourself included, Milloy) isn't yet so intractable that they've managed to find the narrative handhold on the issue that somehow skirts over the fact that one shot will prevent many, if not most, cases of cervical cancer among the next generation. (As for your angle, Milloy, it should be clear by now that calls to racial conscience don't exactly resonate in conservative eardrums.) So then: You may choose a Stone Age world where men smash their penises with rocks and women die of utterly preventable cervical cancers, or you may choose a world enlightened by sound science, where cock goes unmolested except in the best sense of the word and cancer-causing HPV is prevented by simple vaccination. Embrace perfect penises, Milloy—for the future.
Someone convince me that this AIGA panel on DIY in D.C.—hosted at a posh bar, promising exclusivity and restricted access to the panelists, and charging between $50 and $65 at the door—is intended for an audience broader than District arrivistes. From the press release:
Which of the following might describe a typical day in the life of a D.C. designer?Joining the jetset sounds quite glamorous and Marvin's a fine establishment, but there remain institutions in town—Provisions Library, Busboys & Poets, area museums and galleries, and various coffee shops among them, as well as any number of nonprofits—that promote debate about effective advocacy for art and social change, gratis.A. Moderating a panel at a graffiti art show, meeting a band on your record label for lunch, and making some logo sketches for that new wine bar opening down the street from your office.
B. Traveling the world taking photos of your world-famous dj friends on tour, filming a documentary about disarming land mines, and building a web site for an airline.
C. Curating a roaming art gallery, hosting a live-art "happening," and just plain having fun.
D. All of the above.
Annie Leibovitz for Condé Nast, 2007–8.
A bewildering essay on Annie Leibovitz by Choire Sicha for the New York Observer. He says that in the 80s, editors at Rolling Stone, clutching stats in hand, pushed out design and photo talent in favor of covers that polled well with consumers and moved newsstand sales. "Then as magazines went, so went Annie Leibovitz," writes Sicha.
Then comes the more provocative thesis that as Leibovitz continued shooting the same people she was unable to strike gold twice. "There is Mikhail Baryshnikov on the beach in 1990—and then, in 2006, he is rappelling down or up a building, looking nothing so much like a Bruce Willis stand-in. And then again also as an incredibly old Peter Pan in one of the latest Disney campaigns."
But neither idea pairs with Sicha's stated thesis: that "An artist who was once fascinated with her subjects lately seems largely fascinated with herself." Granted, that's a dek line and editors write those, not writers. Nevertheless, the thesis is either that something changed about Leibovitz's work or something changed Leibovitz's work and by the end of the piece it isn't clear which Sicha believes.
In fact, I think there's no problem if you just refuse to take Leibovitz at her word when she says she was never a journalist. In fact, she was and still is. At one point her editors asked her to live among her subjects and produce provocative photographs getting to the bottom of them, whatever she thought that entailed, and that's what she did, reliably and at a fast clip. Now people ask her to lend her brand name to their pursuits, whether that's a Disney campaign or an editorial spread, and it doesn't matter whatsoever to anyone what she produces so long as her name's on the project and a beautiful face is in the frame. There's no overarching structural factor behind her professional decline unless you want to call Tina Brown an overarching structural factor, and I don't. It's really very simple: Annie Leibovitz used to be a great journalist, but now she's a hack.
Jeffry Cudlin and Sharon L. Butler take exception to Michael O'Sullivan's review of Amy Sillman's solo at the Hirshhorn. O'Sullivan suggests that he doesn't buy Sillman's claims that her work is conceptual—but then he wraps up by dismissing conceptual art. ("And that's the problem with conceptual art, you see.") O'Sullivan's take on Sillman's work seems, frankly, inaccurate.
Cudlin calls it a head-scratcher. Butler, who is a very keen critic, has a take that strikes me as strong ("Perhaps he would be more comfortable writing for the sports section"); Carol Diehl in comments sounds a self-congratulatory note ("Hi Sharon, we're a great pair: you outing the 'under-thinkers' and me outing the 'over-thinkers'").
That sort of "outing" isn't what's called for in re O'Sullivan's work. Occasionally the blogosphere's talent for correction seems like a calvary that's eager to mobilize. O'Sullivan is no Charlie Finch, that's all I'm saying.
Only with some effort could you produce a list of the top ten horses of all time and do worse than North by Northwestern has done. Pokey is a contender, maybe. But Mr. Ed for the top slot? Put peanut butter in my mouth and I'll talk, too. Three Kentucky thoroughbreds to represent the greatest horses of all time? It won't do. Here I give you the record corrected:
10. A horse with no name
9. Equus
8. Artax
7. The Horses of Helios (Pyrois, Eos, Aethon, and Phleyon)
6. The Fire Mares of Krull (watch at 5:17)
5. Sarah Jessica Parker.
. . . I'm kidding! Number five is Maurizio Cattelan's La Ballata di Trotsky.
4. The horse you rode in on
3. Shadowfax
2. Incitatus
1. Pegasus
