7/19/2007

Dana Frankfort

35 comments:

Painter said...

Dana Frankfort @
Zach Feuer
530 West 24th Street
NYC

&
John Connelly Presents
625 West 27th Street (between 11th/ 12th ave)
Ground Floor
NYC 10001

Group Shows

zipthwung said...

reminds me of Cahterine Bernhardt

is it better than it looks nomi?

I'm all for artists as represetnatives of the mob, being free and taking names so we, the collective public don't have to.

Like Paris Hilton, Situationist extraordinaire.

The state of the art is public fistfucking (courtesy Matthew Barney) and the usual whip up the butt, sphincter squirt gun, annie sprinkle, Karen Finley, canned shit available at a Staples near you. Pick me up some licorice ropes and a staple remover. Thanks.

Preaching to the converted is of course a great way to prepare for the adult world of getting your ass kicked by conservative angry islamic fucktards, but this painting, and many like it, will never have to face the soiled grease stained halls of the real critics, here or abroad.

Lets all masturbate for peace, and rejoice over our last fresh cows milk latte on the bloc before exile in the hinterlands of NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR INSIPID ART FOR ART's SAKE.

Nothing personal mind you - this is a blanket condemnation, a radical and non-redemptive "refusal" a "negation" a "Nacht der zerbrochenen-langen-Messer-Glaspedicures" a binge and a purge, a bloodless oxygen rich transfusion of new art to the "main vein" of the market.

I only hope a critical trend against figures like damien Hirst and Richard Serra will continue until all of the media created whores, I mean heroes are eliminated and a new crop can be planted, like dragon's teeth in the topsoil of hell, Earth.

Only then will this painting seem relevant. Position yourself now Dana, atop the longboard, the big waves are coming, and they are tingedd red with algae and barbed with medical waste.

None said...
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Unknown said...

zip
that last paragraph was damn fine!

Mark Barry said...

profound as always and don't forget a tetanus shot, zip.
I'm not quite sure why, but I liked her work that I've seen, small, word paintings. Maybe a little Ryman and a pinch of de Kooning.

Anonymous said...

Good one Mark, that's it, a little Ryman doused on occasion with strange veils from the ghost 85. But then they are their own thing too!

anthony said...
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anthony said...
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anthony said...

I suspect that without an introduction to the game, most people respond to and create insipid art! Is this art for everyone? I don't read this as preaching to the converted. If you want nuance or veiled allusions to describe your message about cultural identity then you are talking about some marketable stuff, but that happens over a long, drawn out period of training where you are taught to avoid being too direct.
This stuff will resonate with the uninitiated beacause it is fairly easy to read. Is that really bad?
I have seen high school art addressing these themes with a higher degree of irony, but do we need that for the work to operate at the artworld level? If you haven't noticed irony is a built-in, media fed feature on all Western people ages 7 and up (my daughter is bright, so she started at 6).

CAP said...

Gold star to the little girl with the big brush.

anthony said...

Speaking of the critical trend agaist Hirst:
http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/07/fucking_with_perception_hirsts_for_the_l.html

Ryan Hancock said...

From 2005 NY Times Review:

"...It's not quite clear how committed Ms. Frankfort is to her words; she may just be a young artist looking for a way into painting and attracted to the way lettering dictates certain kinds of gestures. Still, she has gained enough access to her medium to make one curious about what will come next."

Ryan Hancock said...

I'm sorry.. it's probably me, but Anthony I can't figure out what the hell you're talking about..

anthony said...

"Preaching to the converted is of course a great way to prepare for the adult world of getting your ass kicked by conservative angry islamic fucktards, but this painting, and many like it, will never have to face the soiled grease stained halls of the real critics, here or abroad."

This painting strikes me as a brave gesture without much subtlety. It smacks of the forthright-ness of youth. I was trying to applaud the attempt (despite how little I care for the painting itself)...

CAP said...

A little Bob Ryman and a dash of De Kooning
Keeps the old boys happy and little girls aswooning,
That pink is so hot and the white is just right!
But don’t think that’s arbitrary, absolute or formal,
These days we know they’re abstracted from the practiced and normal.
A star tries more angles that a cross or crude cervix,
Points to a history of accrued law and comics.
There’s nothing spontaneous or surprising in a brush with old lines,
Nothing less calculated than a drag through old lies.
Does abstraction seem any safer or sorrier for a brush with the trite?
If painting were only brushes and pictures always paint, it might.
But why indulge the triers at the expense of art history?
Their angles work them on the inside, expect others to trust mystery.

zipthwung said...

antnony:

"I suspect that without an introduction to the game, most people respond to and create insipid art!"

by "game" you mean the socially constructed set of rules (see Rousseau's social contract)that we all "agree" to try to "play by"?

Because i've heard a great deal of confusion over what the rules are, and also a lot of claims to authority based on historical knowledge, placement in a historical narrative (see revisionism), cleverness (layers of irony or self reflexivity/self conscipousness - I know you know you know?), and transgression/otherness (I'm so fucking there brah!) Not to mention moral authority.

Before I continue, let me say that I was never part of any scene, and I was not influenced by anyone, and also, I don't fucking care.

back in the day if you were "skilled" in the courtly arts you could call the king a dingus to his face and he could laugh it off like you didn't really mean it, but of course he was a fucking dill-hole, and everyone knew it. This was called "courtly speech" and was so ironic it separated the heads form a lot of bodies around the time of the French Revolution. Ho ho ho (they all had concubines and slept with the servants).

So I don't know if this work is ironic so much as bad (Gay=pink jews=expensive triangles=Helgelian synthesis? Am I reading this right?)

I know a lot of big Jew collectors came out of Europe after WW2 (Thats the war that was started by an artist/critic) and resulted in the estheticization of politics or some shit (fill me in on that).

One idea is that collectors have agendas (collect degenerate art or no one will support your love of Algerian "trophy" hunting) or ideologies (kick the neoconservatives in their socially sensitive asses).

I don't know any of this for real, im totally on the sidelines, red shirting it on six different teams, a real fence sitter - more gatoraide that way.

I started irony at 3, but I was on to satire at 2.

And if you don't know the rules - are uninitiated - then your backswing sucks? Because when you think you hit a hard volley, you were actually hitting the net?

And does long training mean nuance or merely delusional pretention (see Guy Debord)?

Ryan Hancock said...

I'd like all the seconds it took me to read that returned please.

poppy said...

i can understand how this work steams some people..
but those word paintings are really anything but 'cute'
like - happy to be of service..too what?
on a positive note.. when you got a deeper type of purple and add a little red and keep a similar tone and brush it over the darker one you get a translucent type of quality happening.. anyone notice that?

CAP said...

Yeah I noticed it, when I was about 7.

But to be fair to Frankfort, the word works are a lot stronger -
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/dana_frankfort.htm

- Make especially good comparison with the Landers post, scantily dealt with earlier on PNYC.

zipthwung said...

I notice this artist was not in the Saaatchi USA today exhibiton. Is that an omission or was she a day late?

CAP said...

No he's saving her for the next show which will be called Saatchi Waatchi Poos.

webthing said...

How to discuss this one.

It's obvious nobody really likes it, because faux-naivety is an affront to people who can read, especially such a symbol, it's like saying 10,000 words at once.

Oh...

i like the idea myself of how illiterate people would see her word paintings, i can still remember, if i brush all the mescalin aside momentarily, a time when i couldn't read as a kid and looked at the strange shapes the adults made sounds out of. A time when i told my ma not to bigtalk at me, ('yell' in adultspeak).

Well its weird how this painting brought my shit back to kindergarten. Damn those humans, always trying to read things...

welcome to china, i mean earth.

webthing said...

by the way i took note of prior comments, dug up an old jimi record and under the needle, then stared at the jessica dickinson while listening to

1983...(a merman i should turn to be)

the evil donkeyrabbit revealed something no sentient being ever ought to know, vomit is lethal.

And on return, i remembered that Aqua is the closest thing to the only word that is consistent in various ways throughout the base of every european language.

1968

Anonymous said...

OK we've moved on so it appears. This reads fresh to me. I like the body of work. Not sure about the flowers and balls stuff, but trying things out...
No-one mentioned Janis Joplin.

Unknown said...
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Steppen Wolf said...

Just got back from Zach Feuer and I must say that I was not very moved by Dana’s letter paintings that say 'EITHER WAY' any which way on canvas. I did not think much of the other paintings by Dana also. I guess her technique of obscuring the image with oil paints should evoke reactions, but unless explained well, these do not do much.

I would highly recommend going there to see Keith Mayerson's 'Anne Frank's Wall' (oil on canvas, 40" X 60"). This painting made it worth the visit.

Nomi Lubin said...

zipthwung said...

is it better than it looks nomi?

No, I don't think so. But I'm not as offended by them as most of you are.

Unknown said...

Quisquilloso said...
Also, would a cross or a crescent mean anything different from a Star of David here?
My read is that that is part of what's going on here. The Star of David resides somewhere in an unconscious store of symbols (and words) that we access instantaneously and only with a vague investment in their reference to the big ideas - peace, happiness, catastrophe etc etc (note my own indifference to listing them).

These paintings are thick and materially factual. In terms of "words as meaning", Frankfort seems to understand our fundamental unwillingness to achieve hard fought "meaning". The words are extracted from the netherregions of our mind, where they swim barely touched in the miasma of lifeness, mirrors to ideas that are beyond our reach even as we talk about them, fight about them, hope for them.

And when they appear on canvas they are about just that. And nothing more. Atleast, that's my take. More like fool's gold, than gold. Not the diamonds of Hirst. Definitely not the Star of David - as - melodramatic fist-fuck that Zip suggests. Not nearly that pointed or clear by design. By the way Zip, your world weary condemnation is an old standard. Noone cares about your anti-art for anti-art's sake post. There, just as easy, it seems. And just like that the world is good afterall. Redshirts and Gatorade - ok Im down with that. Just look out for the koolaid and white robes. They're but one seat over.

re: "...It's not quite clear how committed Ms. Frankfort is to her words" - It's clear that Roberta Smith is very committed to her own words... hehe. She seems lost most of the time.

> Maybe a little Ryman and a pinch of de Kooning.
I'll throw in a little Rothko. I like these paintings quite a bit.

Sven said...

jesus

surfkook said...

He was Jewish too.

Unknown said...

No he wasnt. He wasnt,period. He is a myth, but you know.......youre always the last to know.

Stelios Argiros said...

Is it not a shame that in a city with over 300 galleries I can only find 7 galleries that accept submissions?
I think it is disgusting. At least it has given me ideas for a subject of my new work.
Also I think this site should offer a section for us to review eachother's work. Why review people already in the system? How is their work more valid? Why do they need more attention? I assume everyone here is an artist. Why not post and comment on each other's work instead of marketing a system that excludes emerging artists?

Stelios Argiros said...

Here's my "emerging" work for those interested in getting this started.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8633&l=d7b89&id=632712494

Stelios Argiros said...
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surfkook said...

What do you mean a myth?

He was a person who lived and breathed and did stuff and people recognized him as such.

Are you a myth?