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.
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
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.
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?
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!
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.
Good luck. The super collectors will flip your stuff in a second. Wake up kids, a lot of this is business, like real-estate. Buy the work dirt cheap, hang it in your salon and talk shit for two months. Get your friends to believe (kind of) the spiel, then flip the piece (at double or triple your costs) before the market value collapses. Dealers offer clients special incentives to rope their friends into buying more work. You’ve got to be in the game longer than two weeks to really be a player, not that this is Craun’s story but I’ve seen it enough times to notice the pattern. Pump and Dump. Let’s see what the secondary market has to say on this (a truer picture of long term valuation). Being able to play the game with a full knowledge of the rules is a great talent in itself, one that many artists never master, and they ( the ones who don't know the game) are left desiccated carcasses at the side of the road.
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.
kelli, Vija Clemins and others of her ilk (long time “players”) who have been able to keep doing their own thing are able to do that precisely because they know how to “play” the game. You’ve got to know the game to know whose ridding who. Occasionally someone might make a “great painting” by accident, but no one has ever had a long and successful career by accident (though sometimes they like to act like it is.) Whether you agree or not with the values of the secondary marked and the auctions doesn’t matter, they are what they are, that’s where the rubber hits the road, that’s where money talks and shit walks, that’s where you put up or shut up. Is it corrupt and open to unscrupulous manipulation? Hell yeah. Welcome to being a painter in NYC circa 2006
Historically since the Renaissance artists have always been entrepreneurs, that’s just fact. If you have someone to support you or you’re independently wealthy then good for you. Everyone else has to figure how to keep the body and the spirit together, which means, making money. If I have to deal with people I don’t particularly admire but I can make money from well, I have to think long and hart before I tell them to screw off. (And I have, but sometime regretted it latter.)
Being a professional is a good feeling, (not that being an amateur is bad) getting an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. You might change your attitudes when you see some cash trickle in. It’s also a challenge because there are a lot of people out there who think being a looser wanna-be is better, at least that way they don’t have to challenge their own failures. The world ain’t perfect, being an artist is a precarious existence at best but I don’t think any of us would willingly drop out with out a battle, get used to it.
Not being in the market is not being. (except on blogs)
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.
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.
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.
I think I prefer naive ugly paintings to "sophisticated" ugly paintings. But I'm old fashioned.
Think kj just meant there is no happy chalk line between your 1 and 2. Titian's workshop knocked off his popular compositions, and I'm sure someone could draw up a list of good painters that played the field, and the marketplace.
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.
Waiting lists, WOW sounds pretty professional, good for you. So much for the outsider status. Actually and you should (as a younger female) artist appreciate this, the reason that I like the idea of professionalism is because it is empowering. Being a professional is an attempt to take charge of your own destiny, calling your own shots, being in charge.
As far as your list of different kinds of artists, they’re all still within the market place. Nobody heard of Darger or gave a crap about him till someone sold his stuff. Why artists make their work is another matter.
I didn’t dismiss Craum, (so far I’m noncommittal) just some one’s comments about seeing one of his paintings on a “super collectors” wall.
We can disagree on the Rockman mural (didn’t have the punch of his smaller stuff, though I appreciated the ambition, mural painting is one of the toughest things to get to click, it was okay, not one of his masterpieces in my humble estimations)
Oh and don’t keep those collectors waiting too long, when they stop being hot and bothered they become cold and distant.
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.
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, please don’t put words in my mouth (there’s too much past down there any way). I don’t begrudge anybody makin a buck in the market. What I’m commenting on is the martyr like stance that you seemed to have taken regarding somehow being above the “market” purer than the poor zlubes who actually pay attention to that stuff. No offence, but attractive young female artists, like your self, will always have an advantage over crotchety old dudes like me. I’m glad to see you’re thoroughly engaged in the market. You go girl!
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.
What bothers me about this painting is its "photoshop" qualities. It has the look of a projection of a photograph that was sketched out and then filled in with some set of rules but wait sometimes things get wacky and then back to filling in the black or whatever. Its a nice looking painting, its funny, its weird, but its boring. I guess this is a young person with alot going for him and good for him for getting attention. Hopefully he will figure it out.
Kelli, you can pick on me all you want, and I agree with you on who gets “seen” and who doesn’t. Jackie Winsor did have a beautiful show at PS1 a couple of year ago, and she made the bad career move of staying alive, never a good choice here in NYC. Some people chose to drop out or have other things going in their lives that displace their all consuming drive to be “seen.” The market is an unforgiving mistress (or master).
The list is long of overlooked “geniuses” even arguing about their relative quality is an affirmation of that value. Hell just remembering their names.
I like the "Photoshop" qualities. i think it is more exciting than most of the last 20 paintings on here. more relevant to contemporary culture, everything is reclaimed and recontextualized these days... music, fashion, design... so why not art?
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.
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.
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.
I think the "flatness", or photoshopedness of this and the Z.Wollard below comes from the clumsy use of color as much as anything, where all the grays are too blue or the faces all-red brown. The feel of artificiality doesn't seem entirely intentional. Is it too simplistic to say that people have lost the art of warm and cool? And I like graphic art and pop palettes as much as the next person.
The tininesss of the Laurel Canyon painting I think comes from all the red seaweed being to similar a red, and the figures dropped in the middle have that photo-based yet awkwardly rendered feel that seems very tired.
Haven't we seen a lot of awkwardness being poignant, bland images tweaked... but the effect in this or the Wollard feel accidental, the result of someone not in control of the paint(or not in good not-control of the paint). Maybe the combination of an implied intellectual hipness and semi-unskilled paint application don't excite me. Geez, i am old fashioned.
And I'd meet you there Kelli, but i'm on a different coast.
Not that you care about my point, but look at the blue dress in the painting and compare it to the blue in the album cover, posted at the top. The blue in the album (or the reproduction of it) is somewhat subtle, a dark redish, mild blue. I would take that any day over this flat, I'm a blue blue that he plopped in the middle of the painting along with that octopus shadow. Were those conscious choices? I dunno, does it matter? I think the lack of sophistication in this image is a type of pandering to the audience. "Look, this move is so stupid and obvious, you try it!" This crap is ugly and people should say so, so that painters stop doing it and try harder. That's my encouragement to the young.
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.
Isn't the painting with the 4 eyes a Neil Diamond album cover??? This guy just seems to rip off existing images into uninteresting, uneventful paintings....
I have nothing against using images or (as ive said before) projecting or whatever..but fuck, you got to do something with it then just blatantly repeat exactly whats there
fucking hell, my 10 yr old sister could come up with that shit, is she an artist too then? and don't tell me this is some conceptual process cause that is even more bullshit.
I don't even know what youth or being young is anymore in the context of the artworld....seems like only a few years ago being 40 was still young! Fuck age, its just obvious when someone is shit or not..maybe we should put numbers onto that!
I’d better watch it or I’ll offend the powers that be. But when I was a young whippersnapper coming up through the higher levels of the art education system the last thing anybody did was be gentle. The idea was that you should be as tough as possible and rip young artists as often and hard as you could. That way you were doing them a favor by making the weak drop out, and making the dedicated stronger and able to defend themselves without falling back so some weepy victim spiel. Things certainly have softened up since then. (Probably why art is so much better now)
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.
67 comments:
give me a break, just graduated from SVA undergrad!!!
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.
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
You mean he doesn't have his MFA. Well I never.
>one NY super-collector<
one super-dumbfuck
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.
super
duper!
Faberge.
i like this one
of course.
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.
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.)
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!
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.
"you call it a tribute dont you"
Tompac:
"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."
So true, Teamtruth.
re: tompac: "besides fredricks & freiser is a good gallery."
Not if they keep showing paintings like these.
Or maybe they see potential?
re: hombre
now that's what I call a portrait
Good luck. The super collectors will flip your stuff in a second. Wake up kids, a lot of this is business, like real-estate. Buy the work dirt cheap, hang it in your salon and talk shit for two months. Get your friends to believe (kind of) the spiel, then flip the piece (at double or triple your costs) before the market value collapses. Dealers offer clients special incentives to rope their friends into buying more work. You’ve got to be in the game longer than two weeks to really be a player, not that this is Craun’s story but I’ve seen it enough times to notice the pattern. Pump and Dump. Let’s see what the secondary market has to say on this (a truer picture of long term valuation). Being able to play the game with a full knowledge of the rules is a great talent in itself, one that many artists never master, and they ( the ones who don't know the game) are left desiccated carcasses at the side of the road.
hanna hoch double eyes - cant find the picture...
this has somemething to do with something.
KJ - A sale is a sale right? If the gallerty fucks you by selling good work to some douchebag hedge fund go somewhere else right? Tight.
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.
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"
fredericks and freezer informs us that craun"employs razor sharp linework"-razor my eyes and give them to the Wichitaw lineman-
JW, I like "Sunshine in Laurel Canyon" as well
(bigger jpeg here )
The swirlies are pretty virtuosic.
kelli, Vija Clemins and others of her ilk (long time “players”) who have been able to keep doing their own thing are able to do that precisely because they know how to “play” the game. You’ve got to know the game to know whose ridding who. Occasionally someone might make a “great painting” by accident, but no one has ever had a long and successful career by accident (though sometimes they like to act like it is.) Whether you agree or not with the values of the secondary marked and the auctions doesn’t matter, they are what they are, that’s where the rubber hits the road, that’s where money talks and shit walks, that’s where you put up or shut up. Is it corrupt and open to unscrupulous manipulation? Hell yeah. Welcome to being a painter in NYC circa 2006
Historically since the Renaissance artists have always been entrepreneurs, that’s just fact. If you have someone to support you or you’re independently wealthy then good for you. Everyone else has to figure how to keep the body and the spirit together, which means, making money. If I have to deal with people I don’t particularly admire but I can make money from well, I have to think long and hart before I tell them to screw off. (And I have, but sometime regretted it latter.)
Being a professional is a good feeling, (not that being an amateur is bad) getting an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. You might change your attitudes when you see some cash trickle in. It’s also a challenge because there are a lot of people out there who think being a looser wanna-be is better, at least that way they don’t have to challenge their own failures. The world ain’t perfect, being an artist is a precarious existence at best but I don’t think any of us would willingly drop out with out a battle, get used to it.
Not being in the market is not being. (except on blogs)
So many people have done the four eyes thing
doesnt mean it doesnt work
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.
Do what fits, jpeg critic. Do what fits!
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.
And I am a working artist by the way. I like to take breaks and chat. And nobody owns me.
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.
rockman's art looks like trapper keeper covers and goosebumps.
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.
I just found 20 bucks
in my other pair of jeans
My waiting's over, baby!
The credit bubble has lifted!
I think I prefer naive ugly paintings to "sophisticated" ugly paintings. But I'm old fashioned.
Think kj just meant there is no happy chalk line between your 1 and 2. Titian's workshop knocked off his popular compositions, and I'm sure someone could draw up a list of good painters that played the field, and the marketplace.
Kelli, do you mean the waiting list for the crazy house? I'm on one too.
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.
Where have I seen this before, I can't remember. Where was it...Oh thats right it is on the cover of every months copy of New American Painters.
Waiting lists, WOW sounds pretty professional, good for you. So much for the outsider status. Actually and you should (as a younger female) artist appreciate this, the reason that I like the idea of professionalism is because it is empowering. Being a professional is an attempt to take charge of your own destiny, calling your own shots, being in charge.
As far as your list of different kinds of artists, they’re all still within the market place. Nobody heard of Darger or gave a crap about him till someone sold his stuff. Why artists make their work is another matter.
I didn’t dismiss Craum, (so far I’m noncommittal) just some one’s comments about seeing one of his paintings on a “super collectors” wall.
We can disagree on the Rockman mural (didn’t have the punch of his smaller stuff, though I appreciated the ambition, mural painting is one of the toughest things to get to click, it was okay, not one of his masterpieces in my humble estimations)
Oh and don’t keep those collectors waiting too long, when they stop being hot and bothered they become cold and distant.
Hope your getting a retainer too.
My work is on pages 35-37 of every months copy
Alexis Schlockman?
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.
kelli:
"Let's compare waiting lists sometime."
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, please don’t put words in my mouth (there’s too much past down there any way). I don’t begrudge anybody makin a buck in the market. What I’m commenting on is the martyr like stance that you seemed to have taken regarding somehow being above the “market” purer than the poor zlubes who actually pay attention to that stuff. No offence, but attractive young female artists, like your self, will always have an advantage over crotchety old dudes like me. I’m glad to see you’re thoroughly engaged in the market. You go girl!
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.
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."
everyone gearing up for the new season?
He just needed to add some more paint
What bothers me about this painting is its "photoshop" qualities. It has the look of a projection of a photograph that was sketched out and then filled in with some set of rules but wait sometimes things get wacky and then back to filling in the black or whatever. Its a nice looking painting, its funny, its weird, but its boring. I guess this is a young person with alot going for him and good for him for getting attention. Hopefully he will figure it out.
Kelli, you can pick on me all you want, and I agree with you on who gets “seen” and who doesn’t. Jackie Winsor did have a beautiful show at PS1 a couple of year ago, and she made the bad career move of staying alive, never a good choice here in NYC. Some people chose to drop out or have other things going in their lives that displace their all consuming drive to be “seen.” The market is an unforgiving mistress (or master).
The list is long of overlooked “geniuses” even arguing about their relative quality is an affirmation of that value. Hell just remembering their names.
I like the "Photoshop" qualities. i think it is more exciting than most of the last 20 paintings on here. more relevant to contemporary culture, everything is reclaimed and recontextualized these days... music, fashion, design... so why not art?
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.
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.
so if everyone is painting photographs are projections where its at?
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.
I think the "flatness", or photoshopedness of this and the Z.Wollard below comes from the clumsy use of color as much as anything, where all the grays are too blue or the faces all-red brown. The feel of artificiality doesn't seem entirely intentional. Is it too simplistic to say that people have lost the art of warm and cool? And I like graphic art and pop palettes as much as the next person.
The tininesss of the Laurel Canyon painting I think comes from all the red seaweed being to similar a red, and the figures dropped in the middle have that photo-based yet awkwardly rendered feel that seems very tired.
Haven't we seen a lot of awkwardness being poignant, bland images tweaked... but the effect in this or the Wollard feel accidental, the result of someone not in control of the paint(or not in good not-control of the paint). Maybe the combination of an implied intellectual hipness and semi-unskilled paint application don't excite me. Geez, i am old fashioned.
And I'd meet you there Kelli, but i'm on a different coast.
Not that you care about my point, but look at the blue dress in the painting and compare it to the blue in the album cover, posted at the top. The blue in the album (or the reproduction of it) is somewhat subtle, a dark redish, mild blue. I would take that any day over this flat, I'm a blue blue that he plopped in the middle of the painting along with that octopus shadow. Were those conscious choices? I dunno, does it matter?
I think the lack of sophistication in this image is a type of pandering to the audience. "Look, this move is so stupid and obvious, you try it!" This crap is ugly and people should say so, so that painters stop doing it and try harder. That's my encouragement to the young.
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.
good show wade
Isn't the painting with the 4 eyes a Neil Diamond album cover??? This guy just seems to rip off existing images into uninteresting, uneventful paintings....
I have nothing against using images or (as ive said before) projecting or whatever..but fuck, you got to do something with it then just blatantly repeat exactly whats there
fucking hell, my 10 yr old sister could come up with that shit, is she an artist too then? and don't tell me this is some conceptual process cause that is even more bullshit.
I don't even know what youth or being young is anymore in the context of the artworld....seems like only a few years ago being 40 was still young! Fuck age, its just obvious when someone is shit or not..maybe we should put numbers onto that!
I’d better watch it or I’ll offend the powers that be. But when I was a young whippersnapper coming up through the higher levels of the art education system the last thing anybody did was be gentle. The idea was that you should be as tough as possible and rip young artists as often and hard as you could. That way you were doing them a favor by making the weak drop out, and making the dedicated stronger and able to defend themselves without falling back so some weepy victim spiel. Things certainly have softened up since then. (Probably why art is so much better now)
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.
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.
Your funny mr. Zip, but not in the funny haha way.
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.
It is memorable. Last time I ate a hot dog out i barfed and that was memorable.
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