artblog

Friday, April 18, 2003

War art redux

 
There’s plenty of war art. At least that’s what I thought I was looking at in "The Other Tradition" show up at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery until May 7. The pieces were, for the most part, dark and scary, even when they were funny, and they made me think of all the terrible things going on in the world right now, so in my book, they were war art. Paul Swenbeck’s shocked alien critters in "Look A Beaver!" confront a natural world that’s gone awry. Ben Woodward’s "The Cat That Ate Everything," gobbles the sweet birds of nature, and 1993 Pew poetry fellow Linh Dihn’s "Hello Cretin" assaults as it pretends to make contact and say hello. Thank goodness for Brian McCutcheon’s weird and funny "Goat’s Tongue," a pink projection at crotch height coming straight out from the wall, with a googly eye on top for looking where else but up. And thanks for Jeanne Jaffe’s resin and paint sculpture that bubbles with pink tipped breasts and sockets and bowling-pin shapes, a close relative to the piece pictured here.

written by Libby

permanent link  roberta 3:02 PM
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Where's the anti-war art?

 
How can art respond to war? Picasso, Goya and Kathe Kollwitz
were witnesses to war who produced powerful antiwar imagery that gives vent to human anger and sorrow at war’s cruelty. Who’s going to pick up the tools today and make antiwar art for us? Who's got the guts to make hot, political art in this cool, postmodern world? Maybe the best we can do is the cyber posters or comic strips, like Tom Tomorrow's, pictured here, that poke fun at Bush. And maybe cyber art is the appropriate response for this war being played live on tv in our living rooms.
Mad Magazine poster
posters
--Roberta
permanent link  roberta 2:38 PM
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Monday, April 14, 2003

What's the story, Barney?

 
Yes. I think Barney--and David Salle is another example (see image)-- is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the art world at its worst. What’s the point of being this inaccessible and self-absorbed, other than to flummox THE CRITICS (and some very important ones at that, Michael Kimmelman) into believing there’s something there, there? It’s the emperor’s-new-clothes approach to making it in the art world. I’m not saying the imagery isn’t arresting, both for its looks and its creepiness. But the story that would elevate it and justify it so that the viewer is led by the artist into his weird world just isn’t there.--Libby
permanent link  roberta 3:51 PM
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My introduction to Matthew Barney's art came in Jerry Saltz's Art in America cover story (Oct. 1996). Saltz's critical gush about Barney’s sexually weird universe (goat-eared fairies, Goodyear blimp phalluses, new types of genitalia!!) was enough to get your curiosity up - if not your dander. (As for Saltz, he's still gushing! Read
his new piece .) What's the big deal about dressing up in a white suit, donning white pancake makeup, goat ears and cloven lip and dancing around with other guys and women dressed (or undressed). Oh, well maybe it was a big deal. But I've seen one of the Cremaster's (Cremaster 1 at the PMA, Aug. 2001) and lost in the big art production values is its human heart. -- Roberta


permanent link  roberta 3:40 PM
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