TREND: Street Art, Outsider Art, and URGENCY

With all the Banksy, Fairey hubub this year, all the Darger-loving last year, and the current, frequent calls by curators for art that’s made from a sense of “urgency,” I’m taking away the message that art’s new direction lies in a reaction against (<– always a good jumping off point for a convo about art) academic, heavily conceptual art on the one hand, and factory style, assistant/money-driven art on the other hand.

So, out with the Gregg Crewdson budget, the Jeff Koons assembly line, the Damien Hirst branding, and in with the heartfelt scrawls and scribbles, or hard-won wheatpaste murals.

BITS: White Column’s Celebrity Line Up, Simon de Pury, Dumas’ Fury

And in a very amusing tale of what appears to be petty vengeance, a woman scorned, in this case Marlene Dumas, has, it seems, blacklisted one Craig Robins, because he made her look bad by selling one of her works from his collection to David Zwirner Gallery.

Tweet This: Rhizome’s Seven on Seven Seems to Suck Wiki

When WILL the New Museum bring us something new? I ask you.

It has long been my opinion that art which partners with, or claims to make a creative statement with or about, technology, is usually crap.
And, apparently Rhizome’s Seven on Seven event proved it.

Given 24 hours to come up with a collaborative work, seven pairs of artists and technology experts failed to come up with a single original thing.
150 + people paid up to as much as $350 in order to be wowed by moiré patterns, big concept search-engines and wikis, and — gasp– movement detecting programs. Amazing.

The only charming idea: essentially a GPS and a blog for umbrella swapping.

NOW can we stop thinking the web’s going to give us anything more than variations on search engines and color-sound-movement morphs?

For deets: check this very thorough New York Times’s Review by Randy Kennedy

How to Talk About ART: Say “URGENT”

Well, we needed SOMETHING to replace “gesture” — and “interventions” just don’t sell as easily as the all blood sweat and tears you can blarf onto a canvas. More for your money: why

How to Talk About Art: Say “appropriate”

In other words, they can talk about it.