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Read Art Fag City's review of Art School Confidential, the latest Terry Zwigoff/Daniel Clowes offering. Her comparison of stills from the film with a Clowes drawing (above) does not bode well.
We make fun of the art world on a this page, things like the recent out-of-control phenomenon of collectors chasing student tail ("'I bent him over a desk and mentored him till dawn,' says a noted venture capitalist..."), but we're insiders. As AFC points out, Clowes has been out of the game a while, apparently no longer comprehends the difference between Soho and Chelsea, and has dealers offering shows to freshmen in a Brooklyn art school (Pratt?)...filmed in California.
Prereviewing the film (what, I need to see it?)--This might be the latest in a distinguished line of Hollywood movies making artists and the art world look ridiculous. As in, Darryl Hannah as a perfomance artist in Legal Eagles, Demi Moore as a "touch sculptor" in The Juror, Paul Newman's AbEx painting machine painter in What a Way to Go, and of course, Maude Lebowsky. The only film that ever got it close to right was Altman's sublime Vincent and Theo. OK, and Pecker.
Ghost World understood the one art world concept it needed to understand--the Found Object. The film's use of the "Coon's Chicken" poster and surrounding rhetoric was exactly right. But I'm sorry, dealers don't scour the freshman class at Pratt for talent, they just don't.