8/23/2006

Justin Craun

41 comments:

TOMPAC said...

maybe so, but i have seen his work in home of at least one NY super-collector. Not that is any real validation, but the kid is a player. besides fredricks & freiser is a good gallery.

no-where-man said...

Glady Mills shared a studio at Abbey Road with the Beatles, i heard MJ owns the rights to all the Beatles songs and there seem to be a LOT of them in commercials now, hum... i was wondering if i sampled beatles and got sued if it would be by MJ, now that would be fun to have MJ take you to court, sometimes it feels like material needs to be sampled and it expands on the idea sometimes it feels lazy and shallow, i don't seem to have anything to say about this painting, or its sourse this image

TOMPAC said...

nice point, no-where-man. however i believe that MJ has sold off all or close to all of the Beatles catalogue to pay for his own legal issues.

zipthwung said...

super

duper!

Faberge.

i like this one

of course.

no-where-man said...

hum, yes tompac that is what my roomate said - hense the commercials, this came up during well a huge special on the Cirque du Soleil "Love" and i was to buzzed to find the remote, - sometimes it is a cover, sometime appropriation, sometimes sampleing sometimes homage - recontextualisation of a different colour.


take a sad song and make it better - indeed.

triple diesel said...

We prefer posting praise and promoting peers. But we struggled with this work. Justin's show a few months ago seemed clumsy and unfocused. And the selection in the current group show is no improvement. Those "abstract" patterns behind and on the figures are unfueled; they seem like bad wallpaper or screen savers. Did he include them because the figures are insufficient alone?

(But we might be wrong.)

zipthwung said...

In the context of no context

Hitler recontextualized the swastika, Matt Mullican Style, if I were a collector with a pile of MM's (just for example mind you, it is on my mind) I'd probably want to keep the franchise going, so I'd promote (talk about, collect, comission texts about, have sex with) a bevy of artists in the styler of. Roll on franchise roll on! As Ray Crock said, tearily.
How did the elephant get its trunk?
Just so.
Epicurianism!

zipthwung said...

I say vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities - all is vanity.

What will you get out of working like this?

One generation of artists dies, and another generation cometh: but the dude abides!

The sun also rises and the sun goes supernova, and thats all she wrote.

The wind sucks and blows; but mostly blows.

All the rivers run into the sea; but there is only so much water: All things are full of labour, but some things are for shit; man cannot utter it: the third eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the third ear filled with hearing.

The thing that was, can be made again in China; and there is no new thing under the sun.

zipthwung said...

"you call it a tribute dont you"

triple diesel said...

re: tompac: "besides fredricks & freiser is a good gallery."

Not if they keep showing paintings like these.

Or maybe they see potential?

youth--less said...

re: hombre

now that's what I call a portrait

zipthwung said...

hanna hoch double eyes - cant find the picture...

this has somemething to do with something.

kelli said...

I guess this is supposed to be like Frans Hals meets disco and it is kind of interesting at least optically . I cut young people a lot of slack although I don't think it is healthy to skip the part of artistic development where you stew in your own juices and hate the world in isolation. That's the best part!
And sorry the secondary market is itotally insane. I don't agree that Kara Walker's work should be 1/3 the price of Tom Friedman's because they are both interesting and seminal ( in different ways) and both present the same conservation issues in terms of the fragile nature of the work.
And I don't think being able to"play the game with a full knowledge of the rules is a great talent". I think it is crap and older artists like Vija Celmins who are actually good are usually the ones who ignore the rules.
I was lucky enough to study with William Bailey. What he did looked conservative when he was young but later he influenced a lot of people notably John Currin. It's good to ignore the rules and to do what you want in the beginning and that may be one reason why a lot of artists are only good in the beginning.
The question is:
Ride them or let them ride you.
And playing by the rules of the market is being ridden.

James Wolanin said...

I'm not all that familiar with Craun's work, but checking out the Fredericks & Freiser website, I really like his piece "Sunshine in Laurel Canyon"

arebours said...

fredericks and freezer informs us that craun"employs razor sharp linework"-razor my eyes and give them to the Wichitaw lineman-

jpegCritic said...

JW, I like "Sunshine in Laurel Canyon" as well
(bigger jpeg here )

The swirlies are pretty virtuosic.

youth--less said...

So many people have done the four eyes thing


doesnt mean it doesnt work

jpegCritic said...

I noticed too, closeuup.
Too bad cuz I wanna do it too,
but so far I've resisted.

Can someone in power please
dub it a genre -- so I won't feel so bad
in trying it out?
That's an open invitation.

youth--less said...

Do what fits, jpeg critic. Do what fits!

kelli said...

KJ let me be specific. There have always been 4 types of artists:
-working artists ( Rubens, Da Vinci)
-careerists who turned out repetitive product for the marketplace ( Gerard Dou)
-academics (Annibale Carraci)
-loners outside of the system ( anonymous from various centuries, Henry Darger)
I try not to confuse the first two categories. That Alexis Rockman mural was up at the Brooklyn Museum at the same time as Open House Working in Brooklyn. He made all the 5 years younger artists look like lazy slackers. But Rockman while a true proffessional who knows a great deal about his subject is also an anomaly in the art world: a radical with a unique vision. He isn't turning out product. Spending a year on that painting was not the most lucrative thing he could have done. He is ambitious, competing with the past, competing with himself not just competing with the market. There are a lot of artists, older and younger who could learn something from that.

kelli said...

And I am a working artist by the way. I like to take breaks and chat. And nobody owns me.

kelli said...

Oh yeah and that Rockman painting also made a lot of 10 years older artists look like repetitive hacks.
The fact that Craun is young just makes me cut him some extra slack not dismiss him. KJ I also wonder if you assume I am not professional because I am a young woman. Let's compare waiting lists sometime.

Sven said...

rockman's art looks like trapper keeper covers and goosebumps.

kelli said...

Sorry Cooky I've loved him for years. I admire him and also artists like Ashley Bickerton who reinvent themselves instead of repeating their cash cow. Do any other old boys want to compare waiting lists with me? Cause the blog moniker Stumpy has a nice ring to it.

jpegCritic said...

I just found 20 bucks
in my other pair of jeans

My waiting's over, baby!
The credit bubble has lifted!

kelli said...

Bite me. No I meant KJ 's assumtion that I would be happy to have money "trickling" in . KJ I'm sorry that your flow trickles.
And money and age are no reason to dismiss Craun's work or anyone's.

kelli said...

KJ I'm pointing out your assumption that I am not a working artist. Don't be ashamed. Or rather maybe you should be ashamed.
Rockman has longevity because he isn't a hack. People resent him because he isn't mediocre. He is better than he has to be. Better than the market requires. And sadly he is an anomaly.

jpegCritic said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kelli said...

Teamtruth your habit of repeating other people's remarks is a bit kindergarten. Don't make me tie you up in the sandbox and sit on your face. And stop eating your paste.
I'm just pointing out that Kalm James assumes I am not profiting in the marketplace based simply on who I am. A young woman.
And people are suggesting that Craun should not be profiting in the marketplace based on who he is. Young. Bullshit. These are interesting an a trippy drugged op art way. A lot of young artists are better than they have to be because they haven't learned " to play the game" as KJ says and Rockman is an example of a midcareer artist who is better than he has to be and better than the market requires.

kelli said...

Kj I wasn't picking on you just picking a larger fight. The market chews people up and spits them out, consumes the young and discards older artists especially women. All the books about Jackie Winsor are out of print but how easy is it to buy a book about Donald Judd. I'm just saying favor or disfavor in the market shouldn't matter and artists young or old need to take back some power. When a dealer says "collector x would like a painting like painting y" don't make painting y make something like that Rockman mural.

jpegCritic said...

Somehow, now, this JPG above, of the Millis Party...
seems to have a more sinister import.

The zlube holding the beer to the right, thinking:
"Fuck you. I own you. I own Malibu."

no-where-man said...

everyone gearing up for the new season?

kelli said...

It is sad though and I had no idea until I tried to buy a book online about Winsor and couldn't. On the other hand it's also sad to see really young people chewed up by the system so I try to judge their work more gently. You would think that more money in the marketplace would create multiplicity.

zipthwung said...

Because recontextualizing stuff is not art -is language about reordering verbs? or verbiclulates? No, language is about speaking and saying stuff that means something. Otherwise its bullshit. Unless you mean to say nothing, then its a presidential speech.

I cant keep that shit straight. But I think this paitner has as much to say as Alexis Rockman, despite his coffee table books. Like he invented the square cow. No, he didn't. Daniel Pinkwater did (a goldfish) in his book 1977 illustrated by Jill Pinkwater, called "the hoboken chicken emergency"

Im with jpg critic visa vis bubbles. I guess they got popular in the fifties with the rise of the nuclear bomb, buckminster fuller and sci-fi.

no-where-man said...

so if everyone is painting photographs are projections where its at?

kelli said...

somebody came to visit me and was like " you hand-draw things?" like I was weaving my canvas on a loom. in candlelight. and counting my overhead on an abacus. I'm going to the female cartoonists opening on the 6th I think it is.

JD said...

Wade, I couldn't agree with you more. There is nothing visually exciting or challenging about this painting. The color feels straight out of the tube, the space is simply not operative, and the painting is full of the kinds of mis-steps made by inexperienced artists who have no idea why they're using photographic sources. Makes me sad.

jeff said...

the painting is a piece of dog poo period.

Its ugly, and I don't care if he is 25 or 85 its just the one of worst paintings I have seen on this blog.

As far as the player thing...
no comment.

The other work on the gallery site was worse.

zipthwung said...

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

jeff said...

Your funny mr. Zip, but not in the funny haha way.

* said...

craun's work is extremely original and memorable and the fact that you have time to sit on this blog and criticize him suggests that his art has done it's job.