Sol LeWitt’s passing yesterday has had me reviewing with gratitude the delight I have experienced with his handiwork. He lived outside of categorization, moving effortlessly as his desires morphed from Conceptualism to Minimalism to his own brand of glorious and retinally rich expressionism. His collaborative wall murals always felt fresh, immediate and irresistibly upbeat. My […]
Art World
Jerry Saltz on an Art World Gone Wild
Jerry Saltz has written another memorable jeremiad about the ART WORLD (which has to be written in all caps these days given its out of proportion status) in the Village Voice this week. Seeing Dollar Signs: Is the art market making us stupid? Or are we making it stupid?, offers a point of view that […]
Artist Statements: Who Needs ‘Em?
Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture. Jean Cocteau Is it just me who finds artist statements painful to read? Yes, part of my discomfort is that artists are writing about their own work, and Cocteau has a point. I end up wincing at the awkward self-consciousness, and […]
The Wikimuseum of Contemporary Art (aka Chelsea)
Jerry Saltz repositions Chelsea’s excess and sprawl, offering a useful reframing of the place so many love to hate: Staggering numbers of people now complain about how “big” and “out of control” the art world, especially Chelsea, is. True, 300 galleries in one neighborhood is daunting. Still, it’s absurd to claim, as many do, that […]