This is a re-blog of one of my most popular posts, which I am doing largely because people have notified me that they have difficulty finding it on my blog, though somehow they’re become aware of it. My views haven’t changed substantially since I wrote this, not because I haven’t changed, but because my views…
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I take apart the institutional story of art which I was also indoctrinated into through graduate art school, and offer a more broad, human, complex, and even progressive alternative. This article will help you see through the BS that permeates much of contemporary art theory, and which is used to devalue imaginative visual art and to undermine the great art of the past.
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Lots of people hate conceptual art. It’s really quite remarkable, and possibly unfortunate. Ostensibly, artists make art to engage, entertain, and inform people, in which case hatred is an extreme response. Though it does occur to me that the kind of art that is most disliked might be the variety that tries to “challenge” the…
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Book Review: American Art Since 1945, by David Joseselit (which is a handy distillation of current art orthodoxy to deflate). This book could have been dictated by a blind person who had a peculiar obsession with rarefied conceptual art theory. The pleasure of looking at art is never considered. American Art Since 1945, by David…
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“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” What does this maxim mean? Why do people like to repeat it now? Something smells fishy. People seem to think this is about taking shortcuts, but it’s nearly the antithesis.
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[Above is a gallery with details of the image, and below they appear again with context.] [Note: 12/1/2014 I’m revising this one right now.] I’m pleased with this piece, and think I’ve brought together several approaches I’ve developed in other pieces and integrated them into something new. Though this is “digital art”, it’s in the…
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Everything that glitters isn’t art. Sometimes it’s just a highly polished status symbol, in the form of a fashion bauble, for the ultra rich. Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog (Orange)” just sold for $58,405,000 at Christie’s, on November the 12th. If you are fabulously wealthy and missed out, fear not, there are four more copies in…
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“Elephants forgot, force-fed on stale chalk, Ate the floors of their cages.” ~ King Crimson (lyrics by Pete Sinfield) I’m breaking the chain and making a run for it. Yap, you got it, I’m “quitting my day job”.
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Examining the rhetoric of the interrogators. Yesterday a post by American Lieutenant and “terrorist catcher” Chris Simmons, arguing that the “Prisoner’s Dillemma” technique for interrogation proved the “frailty of loyalty” in people, was freshly pressed. After reading his piece, some counterarguments came to mind. [Note that the following is not a criticism of the author – who…
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One of the very best artists I’ve discovered through prowling around on the internet (in this case at Deviantart) is Andrew Newton, who did rather tight photo-realistic paintings in the past (the type that show every wrinkle, reflection, and wayward hair); but whose new work has broken out imaginatively into new terrain that faithfulness to…
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It was all about Kirk, and Kirk was a crock Star Trek Into Darkness wasn’t bad for your typical Hollywood action blockbuster, or as a daytime Soap, but any hint of the maverick, forward-looking vision of the original series was merely a remnant. Starships could now be submerged underwater, and could go faster than Warp…
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Today’s elite art buyers deluded into investing tens of millions on the Emperor’s new canvas. Blue painting with one white stripe fetches over 43 million at Sotheby’s auction. I’ve been to a Barnett Newman exhibition, stood in person before the canvases and patiently took in the subtle permutations of color and form, along with other…
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Some of the best abstract & non-representational art I’ve painstakingly scoured off of Deviantart and included in my group, the “Fine Art Asylum”. Let’s just get out of the way the difference between “abstract” and “non-representational,” which are usually used interchangeably, including by yours truly. “Abstract” is similar to “distorted”, as in an altered version…
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“A one liner that didn’t need to be made, but thank God it’s not as disgusting as his usual work.” Paul McCarthy’s eagerly awaited ginormous “Balloon Dog” will soon be open to public viewing. Paaaaah! Lucky art fans will be able to see it at the New York art fair this weekend at Randall Island.…
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
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