Postcards from Nowhere
by Jed Perl
Post Date Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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When I returned from Los Angeles not long
ago, where I had gone to see the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum,
friends quite naturally asked for my impressions. The strange thing was
that I hardly knew how to respond. And in recent months I have found
myself often faced with this problem. I have not had much of anything
to say after visiting a number of widely discussed events: the 2008
Whitney Biennial; the opening show at the New Museum of Contemporary
Art (aptly titled "Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century"); the
survey of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum; the
Olafur Eliasson show at the Museum of Modern Art; the exhibition of
Jeff Koons's sculpture on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I
have had thoughts, sure; but they are the thoughts of an anthropologist
rather than a museumgoer, of a student of the art world rather than a
person who has had an encounter with a work of art. What there is to
discuss is not visual experiences so much as visual stunts, which are
frequently mind-boggling in their size and complexity. Mostly what I
can offer, after all this museumgoing and gallerygoing, is a series of
postcards about nothing written from places that felt like nowhere.
I gather I am not alone. Reporting on the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Art in America,
Michael Duncan described "a bewildering event, provoking soul-searching
in the local art community and the museum world at large." And in the
lead article in Artforum's April issue, devoted to "Art and Its
Markets," the art historian Thomas Crow complained of trustees reneging
on public trusts, of "barbarism" in cultural institutions, of "vandals
... inside the walls." Well, yes. Then again, I find it interesting
that many commentators are far more eager to criticize the collectors
and the dealers than the art stars who produce this junk in the first
place. Can it be that even the most vapid machine-tooled work is still
covered by the old romantic alibi, namely that the muses made me do it?
The woes of the art world cannot be blamed entirely on the rapacity of
a cadre of collectors, dealers, and curators. After all, it was an
artist, Damien Hirst, who dreamed up the platinum replica of a human
skull, paved with diamonds, that was first exhibited last year in
London in a show called "Beyond Belief.
cont...via:
kultureflash
