I’m Hyperallergic to Francis Bacon. I never thought highly of Bacon because he was a one-trick pony who could have gone so much further. My critique is one of disappointment at a great talent barely fulfilled. This painting doesn’t differ that much from his other work. It has the shading and transparency of Bacon’s style, is equally unpleasant, yet looser because incomplete. Bacon didn’t like it, so he gave the canvas to a painter friend to wipe out and paint over with his own work. His friend kept the work instead, and now it’s up for auction. Since the value of art is made of reputation and marketing, this painting will go on to sell for $6 million, even though he wanted it destroyed. (click on the image to enlarge).
Luchita Hurtado. 1920-2020. Venezuelan-born American artist Luchita Hurtado’s show at Serpentine was being sold on her age, she was 98 then, age is now a brand, a category, an identity. In 1986 she was even invited to be one of the Guerrilla Girls. All of which is impressive, her work is more so.
Painting requires a special relationship with the visual cortex. Hurtado had it, she was a master of non-verbal visual language. Her work lives on.
Activists Crash Private Party at the Museum of Modern Art to Demand Prison Divestment.
The protesters gathered outside the museum to call on MoMA and its board member Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, to divest themselves from private prison companies.
Some issues are so serious we must act on them, private prisons and slavery fall in that category. One thing that concerns us with activism is mob mentality, so this moment can serve as a look at the negative and positive sides of activism. In this case activism is a good move. The elite must answer to the people or their cocktail party might get crashed.
Artist Pravin Mishra Files Defamation Lawsuit Against His Sexual Assault Accuser in India
Pravin Mishra has filed civil defamation charges against an independent journalist, following a number of similar suits as the #MeToo movement grows in India. https://hyperallergic.com/522642/artist-province-mishra-files-defamation-lawsuit-against-his-sexual-assault-accuser-in-india/
#MeToo changes social awareness by spotlighting abusive behavior, till now protected by tradition, wealth and influence. As a consequence, in the future, those tempted by evil will know they’ll be exposed sooner or later. At the same time we’ve also seen false accusations; we need see how this plays out in.
Cezanne’s Bathers
Blake Gopnik’s review of this show at Greene Naftali in NYC is consistent with the fee he’s paid. The artist’s sculptures recreate Cezanne and Picasso. That lack of originality signals a postmodern counter-aesthetic which is all the rage in today’s art theory. One’s work is distasteful, juvenile, trashy, or unimaginative, signalling a bold rejection of the tradition of desirable art.
Art historian and critic Barbara Rose complains of ignorant and lazy artists whose thinking stops at the idea of putting a found object in a museum. Nor does it have to be a found object, an artist can suffer a failure of vision or their best just isn’t good enough.
This work shows a metacognitive insensitivity to the complex iterations of non-verbal languages, that inform us of complexity, shades and subtleties, that tell us what’s good and what is not.
Old School Tech
David Fisher is in Collingwood, Ontario: “A portable piece of entertainment technology that has lasted 50 years. No upgrades, no compatibility issues… doesn’t even require overnight charging.”
I’m a painter. It doesn’t help that the auto-focus in my paintbrush is busted. I’ve also upgraded to colour corrective apps built directly into the canvas. Yes. It does make for a battery pack on the back of the stretcher, but that’s the price of creativity. I’m now saving up for that paint which does the painting for you, contains nano-particles that find their correct place on the canvas. Basically all you have to do is pour the paint on the canvas and sign the finished product. That leaves the artist to concentrate on their vocation, which for the most part is marketing, networking. It takes professional marketing to make an artist.
Volume 34 no 3 January – February 2020 pp 17-18
I think Francis Bacon is a great painter and produced images of the horror of our times.