not dead yet

A link here previously unknown to me came up in the stats, so I checked it out and was charmed to see that this site was described as "closing soon."  Hey!  It's just that, since returning from my time away I haven't actually been out to see anything or read anything of note.  Nobody's closing anything, at least not here.  So let's try and dispel the stench of death from this place, at least for a little while:

- Frieze has a feature on Dana Schutz that takes as its starting point her 2006 painting Google (first in the upper left corner here), which was the most recently painted picture included in her show at the Rose Museum when it happened last year.  It was one of my favorites at that time, so it's good to see someone unpack the (apparent to me but largely unelaborated) nature of it as a model of practice and taking her new work into account.

- The Guardian says, quit whining: if you think we've got it bad with MoMA, how'd you like to have Tate Modern instead?

Thinking about it, yes, I can see that if I were a New York critic I would be finding fault with MoMA too. I'm glad I'm not, and can look at it with the healthy romanticism they doubtless feel when they contemplate Tate Modern's vast spaces, so refreshingly uncluttered by all those Picasso paintings MoMA is burdened with.

Man's got a point.  Still, he misses the larger one, that complaining about MoMA is fun, and a veritable tradition at this point.  What would we do otherwise?

- Via Artworld Salon, Banksy in The New Yorker.  Marc Spiegler notes that the artist comes off as a veritable quote machine, which is true (“The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”), and reminds me of something I've meant to write about for months now: the artworld's sense of humor, generally speaking, is terrible.  It's almost always the case that something within it that gets branded as being in some way funny or amusing, let alone extremely so, is actually weak and fey.  There are exceptions, some of Banksy's quotes among them, but they are few and far between.

- Martin checks out one of Nelson Rockefeller's legacies, the art collection at the Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY.  Lots of pictures--well worth a look.

So: reports of my demise, etc.  Hope to have more substantive content soon.