Camilo Ontiveros wins ARCOmadrid prize

I thought for years that artists today have a lot in common with the impulses that drive Junkers, restorers of antiques and hobbyists who build miniature panoramas featuring their trains and cars. That drive that compels the mutation of the banal household product into art has been harnessed into a dominant force in art today.
This next step was inevitable.
 Camilo Ontiveros is stripping down that idea into something far better by doing less, so this artist outmaneuvers everyone who making clever entities from banal objects, closing the chapter on that tired form.  By just putting a coat of paint on an object, you don’t have to use the artifice of ego by making one thing into something else.  Really if you connect the dots, using one thing as sculptural form to make something else it just the same as old fashion sculpture. Forget transmutation of things into metaphor objects; just let an object be art. Genius. Bravo ARCO Madrid!!

What strikes me as the next step in this gentleman’s work is eliminating the painting the washing machines. Why be such a slave to surface artifice? Why not just present the washers in their informal state?  The unvarnished bravery of just presenting the objects “as is” seems more innovative to me.

Rodney McMillian at Susanne Vielmetter's Los Angeles Projects

Review of review at Cluture monster in the LA Times.

It’s impossible to write a review that makes sense because there is nothing to review; it’s my backyard dude.

I applaud the reviewer in finding this work conceptually lazy. I wish that they would find better work to give exposure to than this fakery that shows no respect for the public, the collector, and the gallery. This is not art, it’s slight of hand arrogance and as long as it’s reviewed its means it’s respected and promoted. I ask the reviewer to value his or her own time as well as ours. Just walk away when is sucks this bad. Don't review it.
There is a line crossed here between rebellion and nothing where it all becomes a joke. The whole anti- art thing has been done and done with an empty gallery or random clutter with junk for 30 years. You can’t slice non- ideas any finer. Why not just declare gutted buildings art galleries? Then Detroit can become the greatest art city in America.


Get back to foundation where we can see the artist taken everything in the their power to produce something of passion that evokes real emotion. The only emotion here is a feeling of being ripped off for your valet parking.

Is there a little Con In Conal?

PATT MORRISON ASKS
Robbie Conal: Political animal
L.A. painter and guerrilla poster artist Robbie Conal talks art -- and cats.( in the Times CM)
Artist Robbie Conal talks about Shepard Fairey case





Pat I wish you would be a little more trenchant in your questions. Conal is a photo tracer like Farley; why not ask him directly if he’s ever had the same problem with his appropriating of images? Does the new heat on the issue give him pause about his own thievery or does he pay fees as his lawyer suggested? Also a little more personal history to probe his self-declaration as a dirty-fingered commie street artist who went on to Stanford… Did he grow up in a gang? Or is he a Vanilla Ice of the Soho print underground? That’s were I remember his prints placed, where art gallery owners could see them.
He seems like a want to be political cartoonist who’s drawing ability was to crude to get published so he posted his work in the street to seed his road to the fine art world.
Conal’s crocodile defense of street artists being ignorant of image approbation feels mealy- mouthed at best. Robin Hood knew what he was doing and he didn’t go to an expensive school. More on the point is: in the heat of creating topical political art you don’t want to be bothered with the niceties of polite society, it takes to much time and somebody might say no.
Posting the work is illegal so why not take a chance and steal the image? As a Sanford educated street artist you got to be a revolutionary to keep your street credentials in Soho, right? It’s just a political statement visually shouted from a brick wall, nobody’s getting paid. WTF Bro?!
Later in the sober reflection of discussing your print prices with your new gallery owner it’s time to cop to the truth and tamp down those feelings of entitlement: when you start to make money on the images in art galleries, it’s time to share with the guy you used for you own end. If artists learned to draw in the first place at school then they won't have to trace and steal images. I’d love to see all the photographers Mr. Conal stole from form a class action lawsuit and kick him out of his ivory tower into the street where he clams to be from.

Tara Donovan at San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art

Yet ANOTHER show of household objects glued together to make clever shapes that pensively become sculptural abbreviation of a fantasy landscape. This must be a kind of instinct of creativity subliminally deformed by growing up watching the Rose Parade where gluing flowers together makes magical floats of kitschy themes of city brotherhood.
All though my years as a commercial artist and animator I found the most popular theme that “creative” businessmen types wanted to do was some from of metamorphous where someone or something changed into something else. In self-mesmerizing tones they would describe their unique idea of rock stars turning into angelic werewolves and ultimately into the products they were pitching. We see a new metaphoric TV commercial once a week.
Surprise art world, it’s to easy--- Anyone can do it by lying down on a hilltop and staring at the clouds until you see a big dogs head or a ducky float by and meld into another shape. This is graphic design with found textiles. Clever craft, prisoners and hobbyists have done it for years. Ironic as teachers of Modern art have clamed skill based art is craft. Plumb deeper, learn to draw and paint. It’s the hardest, but most rewarding thing you will ever do.

MOCA pick: bold or just biz?

So queries Charles Knight on the appointment of Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch in the Culture Monster blog in the LA Times.

I think the supposed clash of cultures that are the theoretical two sides of art world is laughable smoke and mirrors. Outrage in this case inflamed by Mr. Knight’s hierophant concerns amount to a disingenuous echo of our obstinate political system. The Academic world has long ago lost its way by denying the roots of foundation art and most galleries support the same attitude. Posturing like there are aesthetic differences between two worlds that have long intermingled underlines the power of invention to give one’s own opinion some fussy relevance. It’s all just jostling for political power of an incestuous world of fine line shaving that’s eating its own tail.

Art to watch in 2010

I waited to long for anyone to notice this, but in reading the Sunday Arts and books today it really struck me how embarrassing weak contemporary art is that only one artist is mentioned in the artist to watch listings for 2010. Administrators who are good at squeezing money from rich collectors are more important that the artists themselves. Even an administrator that doesn’t yet exist is more important that a real artist. That the symbolic importance of an administrative post is more crucial than an actual artist frightens me. Sadly this hypothesis is a perfect reflection of the average artists work today.
The concept that an artist comes up with has to have a unfathomable value to the average person that in turn can only be understood by critics then disingenuously decoded by them. Then the investment end of art cabal is willing to buy into the new anointed one. The key is if enough approve that the artist is doing something that is a controllable, passion free investment, thus the hot artist is born.
Expansion of museums of junk is what matters to make money from the construction, protect, design and promotion of artists they are heavily vested in. Networking becomes more central for the artist than producing passionate work. Uniquely skilled artists are difficult find and control, better to promote empty vessels that will go with the flow. Next Year will we see any artists listed as being worth watching? Why should there be if they have nothing relatable to say to the world?

Glenn Ligon gets Obama's vote

I will be the first to admit that like all vocations in life there is a dominance of mediocre talent who though a combination of reasons from connections to politics tend to dominate any given field. A mediocre majority runs the world is no great epiphany. There are tons of bad painters of all approaches. The problem is that all forms of education have certain standards that have to be met to become a proficient in your field of endeavor. Not so with art. Basics are replaced with emphasis of a clever idea.
A good example might be Glenn Ligon the conceptual artist who was chosen to have his work hang in the white house. While he has enough education to understand basic design, the strength his work is of the metaphor of cultural repression, not art fundamentals. He encapsulates the concept by taking the text of famous writers written pages, blows them up to a distorted super graphic size, and silk-screens them onto his surface of choice. Like a child with a Xerox machine copying and distorting he "creates" some nice texture effects. The metaphor of cultural repression takes visual form by being impossible to read. Get it? I guess some people find this deep; I think it’s smart high school level collage.
When rich people buy this art they feel smart and socially informed. In this case they now have a politically correct hook that seems profound, but is easy to explain to their friends and makes them sound like a sage. Critics, galleries, museums do the same. It fits smoothly into marketing, investment and the promotion of the Cabal that controls the art world.
Could Mr. Legion do the same with a sound education in the fundamentals of representational painting? Picture a portrait painting of James Baldwin on the skill level of Andrew Weyth that showed the layers of cultural repression etched on the man's face. Two approaches to the same idea. One supported by the art world, one considered trite craft.
If Mr.Ligon could paint well he might combine the two and have more tools in his toolbox. In the end the 20 years it takes to learn how to paint is too much of a sacrifice in a world where the power brokers give it no value. Better to network; appropriate images and re- format them, follow fashion, and exploit the guilt of cultural repression. How is it something is more unadulterated that comes from combining existing imagery than something that comes out of your own brush? I can’t answer that, but the art world sells that idea.