Department of Pretentious Writing
Posted on December 6th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
From Jerry Saltz’s Art column in the December 3 issue of New York magazine:
Urs Fischer has reduced Gavin Brown’s Enterprise to a hole in the ground, and it is one of the most splendid things to have happened in a New York gallery in a whle. Experientially rich, buzzing with energy and entropy, crammed with chaos and contradiction, and topped off with the saga of subersion that is central both to the history of the empty-gallery-as-a-work-of-art but also to the Gavin Brown experience itself, this work is brimming with meaning and mojo.
And alliteration, apparently.
(My question: Can a thing buzz with entropy? Or be topped off with subversion?)
The work of art in question is, literally, a big hole in the ground.
7 Responses
12/6/2024 10:48 am
“Crammed with chaos and contradiction” — who among us wouldn’t want that encomonium slung around our necks?
12/6/2024 12:33 pm
Thanks, Richard. Before reading your blog, I had no idea that art writing was often silly and hyperbolic. What other subjects are in line to receive this bold, truth-telling treatment of yours? Will you next reveal that writing about wine is pretentious and snobby? Perhaps you will note that writing about sports is sometimes characterized by windy romanticism and pointless machismo?
Write on, you crazy speaker-of-truth-to-power, you!
12/6/2024 3:43 pm
Ooh, ouch - Richard, ma brotha, you gotta cross swords with that beatch! You been dissed…..
12/7/2024 1:22 am
Congratulations, 11:33, you’ve graduated from the Matthew Perry school of comedy:
Set ’em up with sarcasm, hold ’em with sarcasm, and slay ’em with sarcasm, and just when they think they have you pegged, throw sarcasm at ’em!
Now go off to rehab so we can actually have a laugh.
12/7/2024 11:51 am
(11:33 here.) Egret, that was a clever retort, I’ll grant you. But the rehab joke was a little dated for your coup de grace. Did you just see a 10 year old copy of People at the dentist’s or something?
(Besides, in your heart, you know I’m right.)
12/7/2024 12:30 pm
I kinda like the hole in the ground, though.
12/7/2024 1:24 pm
You’re a good sport, 11:33, but don’t underestimate Mr. Perry, I feel sure he has another trip in him…and thanks for reminding me about the dentist, I think I’m overdue…
-Egret