...more recent posts
March 2007 Artforum has review a (pg. 320) of a Paul Laffoley show at Kent Gallery. I'm bummed I missed it. Decent review, I guess, by Jeffrey Kastner:
Laffoley's works tell a psychedelic tale full of compelling sound and fury, but what exactly do they signify? For all their frequent opacity of meaning, the paintings do manage to impart a message of informational consilience that is remarkable in line with cutting-edge science. And unpacking the kernels of genuine scholarship embedded in these crazed matrices will lead viewers on rewarding journeys through often fascinating historical marginalia. Located somewhere between sense and nonsense, between the realm of genius and the province of the crackpot, Laffoley's work poses tantalizing questions about the line separating brilliance from bushwa - questions whose pertinence for contemporary art is by no means confined to the sphere of the outsider.
A Picasso show, recently at the Whitney, is now at SFMOMA. Anyone see it in NYC?
juror misunderstood instructions
aaarrrggghhh
77 million paintings cant be wrong
Anybody want to help further my education?
When I was in Paris I saw the Rauschenberg Combines show. These are some weird pieces, made out of unusual materials (like, say, a goat,) and my understanding was that this was seen as a pretty radical departure at the time (late 50's.)
Last Saturday night I went to MOMA, and was struck by some Miro work from the 1930's. (Would be good if I could remember the name's of some of the pieces, but alas....) To my admittedly untrained eye they seemed at least as weird and sculptural and unpainterly as the later Rauschenberg's. Ropes and parrots and hats and all sort of objects.
So I'm guessing my understanding of why Rauschenberg was so radical needs some deepening. It's not just that he used found objects in his work. But what more?
Hopefully this doesn't seem too stupid or too impossibly broad.