Laissez-Faire Aesthetics by Jed Perl
Auction prices are reaching nosebleed heights. Art fairs are becoming the playgrounds of the super-rich. Museums and galleries are extolling whatever the market will bear. And, what's worse, the spirit of money is infecting the making of art itself. How did something so high fall so low? An analysis of the corruption.
The Shark will be writing more on Mr Perls latest piece -for now, be on the lookout for TNR. How appropriate for us artists here in Chicago to have this article at our disposal considering 'the corruption' epitomized here recently by the completely laughable, just rancid and utterly amateurish paintings of one Josh Smith that Skestos Gabriele Gallery recently imported and exhibited-a sold out show btw -and who bought them?......let me hazzard a guess; -members of the collectors group under the auspices of Mr Curator consisting of his fawning sycophants......after all, 'Saatchi' owns these paintings.....so what if the guy is an awful painter with one puerile and insipid idea -ie. painting his name in the most lame-ass, slack exercises in abstraction 101 -with almost zero skill, without any real comprehension or understanding of what abstract painting actually involves...I mean after all, we aren't interested in actually looking at the work, that's not what's going on here. This, is about status, hence art as status symbol, right? Why go buy a really good piece of abstraction by a good young Chicago artist like for instance, Marianna Levant's paintings at Susan Gescheidel, when you can go plunk down 16k on a trendy piece of junk that will prove how hip slick and cool we really are out here in the provinces, NO?
More later-
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