{"id":663,"date":"2009-06-08T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/06\/links_-_art_porn\/"},"modified":"2009-06-08T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T11:00:00","slug":"links_-_art_porn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/06\/links_-_art_porn.html","title":{"rendered":"Links – art porn?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her review of Dirk Skreber<\/a>‘s exhibition at Fredrich Petzel<\/a>, Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson<\/a> wrote, <\/p>\n

Featuring two vagina-shaped crashed cars impaled on penile poles and bare-breasted paintings of super heroes, the show is the closest thing I’ve seen to pornography lately.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s a bad thing? First, it’s her idea that the smashed cars are vaginas. I like it, but it’s her metaphor. Second, although she has the advantage on me, having stood in the gallery instead of only seeing representations online, I’m pretty sure these sculptures aren’t anywhere near porn.<\/p>\n

\"artfagcityschriber.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Porn is business. Ask your average male-seeks-female porn consumer if Skreber’s sculptures pass the porn test. They lack porn’s functionality. Like the Beatles in the late 1960s, porn loves to turn you on. Who’s turned on by these? I want to see hands.<\/p>\n

Because she interprets the sculptures as vaginas wrapping a phallus, she’s against them. At the risk of being an insensitive clod, I don’t see why aggressive sexual imagery has to be denigrated or denigrating. The heart is a corkscrew. Art from the heart doesn’t always dress for dinner or pass muster in a women’s studies class. My version of feminism does not foreclose on desires (even rage-filled desires) that have no victim. <\/p>\n

In spite of stepping off the cliff from time to time (who doesn’t?), Johnson is essential. Here’s an example of why<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Baker’s review<\/a> of Squeak Carnwath<\/a><\/b> at the Oakland Art Museum<\/a> opens by acknowledging the broad general view and sympathizing with it: <\/p>\n

It took me a long time to warm to Squeak Carnwath’s painting.
\nTwenty years ago, I regarded it as a self-involved pastiche of outsider-art mannerisms. But the Oakland Art Museum’s survey of the past 15 years of Carnwath’s work makes a nearly irresistible case for its authenticity and substance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m not persuaded, but the review is so powerful I’m left feeling that I need to see this show before continuing to indulge a long-standing dismissal. On the other hand, a good curator can hide major faults and stress minor virtues, which might be all that happened here.<\/p>\n

Baker again<\/a><\/b>, on Robert Frank:<\/p>\n

Part of Frank’s originality was to institute the photograph as a
\nmembrane responsive both to a moment’s reality and the photographer’s
\nfeelings about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Holland Cotter on the heart of the matter at the Met’s African\/Oceanic survey<\/b>:<\/p>\n

In the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum you’ll find a tiny African copper relief that probably predates, and would surely have awed, the great Lorenzo Ghiberti. You’ll encounter a bust of a Nigerian beauty to rival Nefertiti; an Oceanic Apollo with the physique of an Olympian; and a Micronesian statuette that is, with its stacks of faceted planes, Brancusi before Brancusi. (Review here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cotter again<\/a><\/b>, on Giacometti:<\/p>\n

These portraits are laborious, noodling things, their lines repeated
\nover and over as if Giacometti were determined to create something
\nsolid from nothing, then to obliterate that something. Far more relaxed
\n— and surely Giacometti drew as compulsively as he did to relieve
\ntension — are the drawings that look incidental, on the fly: an empty
\nstudio interior, apples in front of a window, a pot of tulips, a tree.
\nHeaviness lifts; anxiety is dispelled. The faint lines of the tree fly
\noutward and upward like flames, evidence of a lightened-up, fly-away
\nartist that some part of Giacometti may always have wanted to be.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From Culture Monster<\/b>, Daniel Nicoletta’s portraits of Harvey Milk, A life (cut short) in pictures<\/i>, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also from Culture Monster,<\/b> David Pagel’s fine review<\/a> of Kelly McLane: (Yes, description still mattters.)<\/p>\n

\n

In “Zero Gravity Madonna Lab,” plump pink babies grow like hothouse
\ntomatoes as older kids, in hermetically sealed bubbles, evoke science
\nexperiments gone wrong. In “Flaming Arrow,” a sunny sky rains cherubic
\ncowgirls as a monstrous maw opens in the desert floor to devour
\neverything around it.\n<\/p>\n

Her paintings add depth and color to such point-blank encounters,
\nmaking the grand sweep of history come alive. If her oils and acrylics
\non canvas were novels, they would have a lot in common with works by
\nMark Twain, Wallace Stegner and Thomas Pynchon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pagel again:<\/b> His review<\/a> of Pae White is a thing of beauty:<\/p>\n

\n

Over the last couple of decades, Pae White has made art out of
\nalmost nothing but thin air: a handful of cat whiskers affixed in a
\ndrop of glue, a spray-painted spider web set in resin and the
\nshimmering reflections cast from a slab of mirrored Plexiglas sheets.
\nAt 130PE<\/a>, the light-handed artist
\ncontinues her lighthearted gambit, transforming incidental things into
\ninstances of wonder that are ripe with delight.<\/p>\n

What’s new is the delicate touch of melancholy. Smoke and leaves are
\nthe vehicles for White’s casually exquisite installation, which
\nconsists of woven tapestries, laser-carved sheets of brightly colored
\npaper and hundreds of fake leaves, all made mechanically and many
\npainted, stained and shaped by hand.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From Jen Graves<\/b>, definitive piece on commercial ventures borrowing or stealing from artists, here<\/a>. Facts cited and complexities illuminated.<\/p>\n

Graves again:<\/b> She offers to take note in a public artist’s support group – real interviews in an imaginary frame. Funny, true and frightening, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From Sebastian Smee at the Boston Globe<\/b>, a dud<\/a> of a review of Matthew Day Jackson<\/a>. Smee looks for polish and misses the power of the artist’s hungry heart. <\/p>\n

Smee is in his 30s but writes as if he’s more than twice that age, cozying up to the audience as if he’s entertaining it over brandies in a men’s club. Even when he’s writing well, which is frequently, I feel like shaking the smug out of him. Maybe that’s all he needs – one good shake. <\/p>\n

(Note to Smee: Get rid of most of your adjectives and step off your high horse. Treat your reading audience as if it’s a collection of intelligent but potentially dangerous strangers you’ve been hired to engage. Do not speak for them, pat them on their heads or presume to anticipate their reactions, and you’ll be fine.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her review of Dirk Skreber‘s exhibition at Fredrich Petzel, Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson wrote, Featuring two vagina-shaped crashed cars impaled on penile poles and bare-breasted paintings of super heroes, the show is the closest thing I’ve seen to pornography lately. That’s a bad thing? First, it’s her idea that the smashed cars are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}