Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Richard Prince, revisited


What did you think of the Richard Prince show?

It was a one-liner.

HA-HA

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That’s what I thought.

Here’s what some other people thought:


Now I’d like to know what you thought. I see it as an opportunity to test how much the powers that be in the art world actually represent us. Write a review in the Comments, Amazon-style, with one to five stars, and your evaluation, such as “It was great! It sucked!” and then—the most important part—why. It can be as long or short as you want, and you can use your name, a nickname, or be anonymous. I also hope you'll identify your relationship to the art world—artist, curator, writer, teacher, arts administrator, student, gallerist (horrible word—I prefer “gallerista” or “galleristo” myself), observer or whatever. And I’ve noticed how, on Amazon, not having read the book often doesn’t deter people from reviewing it. Same here; if you're an art-interested New Yorker and didn’t get there—after all, it was up for a third of a year--your reason for skipping/avoiding/forgetting it is valid because I’m not sure we get a true picture if we only query only those who were interested enough to go.

Make sure your comment registers and that you see the “Your comment has been saved” banner. If not, type in the code words and click again.

And feel free to pass this on to students, friends, whomever, anyone you think would like to weigh in.

Thanks! And then check back to see what's been written.

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Actually I found the visitors to the Guggenheim, on the very last day of the show, way more interesting than the art. Such as this father and his art student daughter from Australia:


And this family from Croatia. Either they're the coolest people in Croatia or everyone there is cool:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Something about the combination of the Guggenheim and Richard Prince re-contextualized his entire project for me in a way that made it entirely more aggressive / corporate..........Although I kept meaning to go see if this impression held true for me at the actual show, I ended up not even going. In the end, I don't think I needed to go.......this is the stuff of magazines and supermodel intimidation, superstar glamming; I don't need to go as far or pay as much as I would have at the Gugg to experience/endure something that is easy to find in real time life.

Anonymous said...

I found the whole show playing out as a insider joke on art , the market and disinformation. What might have seemed playful, and attractive to look at in a younger less established artist, came off sour and mean. The logic of all the work was circle like in nature, a fallacy in reasoning in which the premise is used to prove the conclusion, and the conclusion used to prove the premise:"I say it is art about a joke because art is a joke". I think it was more a joke than "about" a joke. The crafty nature of how they were made was flat-footed . I didn't feel sorry for anybody involved in this fraud but felt the "gay" subjects were handled in the same and equal manner, like all other subjects, this is rare but exploitation can be an equal opportunity for any artist that finds no real meaning in what he does but to make fun of everyone equally, and maybe his best feature , himself included. Like the comment before mine, I could have used the money that I spent to get in for a little lunch with C.D.......I left the museum hungry for anything real.......Rx
p.s. Mark thinks I am trying to be C.D. by writing this! not true.

Anonymous said...

Artists who make suckers out of people with disposable income have been pretty thick on the ground since the 80s. fine. The guggenheims retrospective of Ross Bleckner was a warning sign of where that place was headed. fine.
I never cared for RP work. I often thought it just strip mined popular culture for a sort of ersatz statement about ...what ? I knew an art critic some time back who would lather on about "how smart RP was", how "smart he was" etc. Perhaps if you buy one you sort of cathect the intelligence, become intelligent, oh,look he/she has a RP etc. 'they must be intelligent'. Rather than the acquisition and display of art as a small monument to ones greed by getting lets say a JS, one can acquire an extra length of brains at the same time. Very good marketing actually. But for 15.00 I'm afraid I'm going to have to miss the sale.