March 17, 2011
Lynda Benglis
Oh yes, many fine pieces walking around Chelsea on Thursday nights”but not so many hanging on the walls.
Art fairs, such as the Armory that was on this month, are not the best place to look at art either, but at least you can buy it. Like all good investments, it is best done before the crowd gets the hint. At a dinner the night before the opening, a Swiss playboy and a contemporary art museum’s curator were competing to buy, sight unseen, a piece from a major London art gallery’s manager. The Swiss playboy had been single for many years but put his bachelorhood on hold four days earlier. There was a girl texting him from his pad, which may explain why he was able to aim his javelin, with the sort of zeal he usually reserves for the ladies, at another sort of prey: the Big New Thing.
Why is it big? Because the gallery says it is and if they can get enough of the right people to buy that idea, then it is. How is it new? Nail varnish! It looks like a Rothko”though it certainly doesn’t feel like one”but it’s done in nail varnish! Brilliant! They fought to buy it sight unseen.
If the galleries and the fairs are too distracting, a museum might be a good place to look at contemporary art”the New Museum, for instance. Right now there is a show of paintings by George Condo. It may at first appear that George Condo is a portrait painter, but do not be fooled; he is actually “reconstructing our basic idea of portraiture.” While the other guys were busy “borrowing imagery,” Condo one-upped them and “adopted styles.” And if you are wondering what emotions this adopted reconstruction is meant to stir in you, look no further than the wall”no, not at the paintings, at the curator’s wall text. “Horror, fascination, delight, but also empathy” are all prescribed.
On the top floor there is an exhibition that consists entirely of wall text called Museum as Hub: “An accord is first and foremost only a proposition””that is the title. Then many more paragraphs in that style”that is the show. So there’s a title and a show, but as far as I can discern, no art.
On the second floor we have Lynda Benglis, whose “sculptural language” is “distinctive and influential” because it “intersects and transcends” all the major contemporary movements. There are some nice shapes in her body of work, as in her body; which is also exhibited.
It’s the art one can”t see that is hard to approve.
