Coca-Cola at Fine-Wine Prices?

[Brian C. Miller]

HA! He lives on the WEST coast!!! - thereby neatly invalidating your entire argument!

You're going to buy me a plane ticket and accomodations to see the show?? Wow, you're a really swell guy! And here I was looking at the Seattle Art Museum for upcoming shows. After all, I can afford the $5.00 bus fare. But San Francisco? Uh-uh.

(I just bought an Omega D5-XL with dichro head. You think I got money now?)

[r.e.]

Good grief, Brian,

You're in Washington State. If you are interested in seeing the guy's work, and San Francisco is a problem, just fire up to Vancouver. I mean, that's where Wall lives and works. In your neighbourhood.

Don't even think of saying that Vancouver is too far to go

There are images in the US travelling show that you will "get", as a resident of that part of the west coast, even though you are on the American side of the border, on a level that someone from, for example New York or Toronto, won't.

It is so cool to go to New York, walk into the pre-eminent modern art museum in the United States, and see images that are so rocognizably about the west coast of North America, artistically, geographically, historically (in the case of two images, archeologically) and socially.

[Doug Howk]

Beginning under the stewardship of Steichen, MOMA has been part of the NY hucksterism trying to foist on us provincials another trend in photography ( see Szarkowski's Mirrors & Windows for an example). Sorry but I'm not buying into the latest art world con job. As I said before, Wall's & similar work will not stand the test of time. For those who have bought into the con - whether paying or emulating, good luck with your investment of time or money. Seems to me the Dada joke is being replicated in the photographic art world (another signed urinal).

[JW Dewdney]

Hey Doug - since you're into the 'conspiracy theories' and everything... you should read Serge Guilbaut's "How New York Stole Modern Art" or something like that. It's actually a VERY good book. He suggests that modern abstract art (the american variety) was actually an FBI plot to attract attention away from the socialist art being done at the time (these were the anti-communist days) - in league, of course, with the patrons of taste, the museums, etc. etc...

[Doug Howk]

JWD, thanks for the suggestion. I notice that Amazon also recommends Diana Crane's Transformation of the Avant-Garde: NY Art World. I'd probably include Pollack, Warhol & Maplethorpe in my NY con list. Its all about marketing.

[tim atherton]

Hey Doug - since you're into the 'conspiracy theories' and everything... you should read Serge Guilbaut's "How New York Stole Modern Art" or something like that. It's actually a VERY good book. He suggests that modern abstract art (the american variety) was actually an FBI plot to attract attention away from the socialist art being done at the time (these were the anti-communist days) - in league, of course, with the patrons of taste, the museums, etc. etc...

I don't think it's disputed now that during the Cold War the CIA funded art - to a significant extent - through various front foundations (the Ford Foundation among others), funding gallery shows, criticism, journals exhibitions to Europe, commissions etc in order to counter the cultural side of communism and Soviet Art. Abstract Expressionism especially benefited from this quite substantially.

Of course, such actions are nothing new - culture as an arm of Empire goes back at least a couple of Millenia

[Martin Miller]

I was at a bookstore last night and saw the MOMA exhibition catalogue for the current Wall show. In Peter Galassi's accompanying essay he made the point that Wall's career has been characterized by a highly experimental approach to picture making. He said this:

"Wall's improbable triumphs would not have been possible without his less successful experiments - and it is part of our pleasure to debate which are which."

Obviously, the pleasure is not all his.

"Just Washed" did not appear in the book and assuming that the book contained all the works on display, one could infer that Galassi may have considered it one of the "less successful experiments." I'll give Peter a call later this morning to find out.

[Colin Graham]

You know if Wall is getting people so fired up about what they believe in, he has filled not a small obligation, regardless of what you think of his work.

[Steven Barall]

It takes a special kind of person to compare airing one's views to something Adolph Hitler did. What a moron.

[tim atherton]

It takes a special kind of person to compare airing one's views to something Adolph Hitler did. What a moron.

I'm not so sure - Kitsch and it's associated attitude of sentimentality was at the heart of how the Herr. H. managed to exert control over almost a whole nation.

People think of Kitsch as being funny or cute, but it's essentially much, much more dangerous - and at the heart of a lot of what passes for "art".

summed up you could say (from the dictionary of Sixty-three Words), Kitsch is: ''the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one's own reflection.''

This is the real power of art in its most destructive form