Category: visual

Jeffrey Deitch: “One of the biggest misunderstandings of this is that somehow there’s the art market and then there’s, let’s say, the ‘good’ part of the art world,” such as non-profit organizations or museums, with their educational mission.

“All public memorials are vulnerable to disrespect—by pigeons on statues, wherever there’s a statue, and by selfie-snapping yahoos, everywhere. But that’s a reality of living in a teeming world. Monuments aren’t churches. The most affecting ones enable, but don’t seek to impose, fitting emotional responses.”

“I love the art world; great art is getting made and shown. Art will live, as always. But we all have to admit that the art world isn’t the definition of radical right now. There’s still too much inbred art about itself or otherwise so specialized that it takes reams of explaining in almost unreadable texts just to say why it’s relevant at all — and those things that might feel relevant, or radical, in another context often get so buffered and wrapped in the wealth of the system — fancy museums, big biennials — that they cease to offer anything truly new-seeming.”

“It’s an ideologically pure, dependably crowd-pleasing position to take. Its naiveté also makes me want to start throwing large objects long distances out high windows.”

“For decades it was proudly displayed in the Greco-Roman galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art … Today it sits in an evidence room at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan after prosecutors quietly seized the antiquity last week based on evidence that it had been looted by tomb raiders in Italy in the 1970s.”

The 10’x6′ painting by Guercino was stolen from its home in a Modena church in 2014 and found and seized by police earlier this year in Casablanca. Officials say it has lost 30% of its pigment.

Under its fake radicalism, Banksy’s Girl with Balloon is the kind of sentimental tosh our great grandparents too would have voted as Britain’s best-loved. Its kitsch pathos resembles one of the most popular Victorian images, John Everett Millais’ painting Bubbles, a picture of a child blowing bubbles used as an advert for Pear’s Soap. Today we laugh at it and sneer at them for liking such soppy stuff. Imagine how future generations will mock us for sanctifying Banksy, the Boaty McBoatface of modern art.

And it was started, and is run, by and 18-year-old. Julia Wijesinghe says, “My friends ask me, ‘You’re from New York, why do you have so much pride for your parents’ country?’ I have one-hundred-per-cent New York pride, too. I got inspiration for my museum from going to MoMA.”

Using artworks in the collection as fundraising sources a terrible message for potential art donors, not to mention the public. “One of the most fundamental and long-standing principles of the museum field is that a collection is held in the public trust and must not be treated as a disposable financial asset … Two of the works the Museum is currently planning to sell are important paintings by Norman Rockwell, given by the artist to the people of Pittsfield.”

OK, it’s a collection on long-term loan from a software entrepreneur, but “for many of the people who work at Rand, the art is more than a backdrop. It’s part of a unique culture, they say.” Apparently it helps people consider thorny problems when there’s challenging art around them.