"welcome to the meeting, twitchy,"

walking across the brooklyn bridge

pictures generation @ the met

The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984
April 21, 2009–August 2, 2009

Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography and Tisch Galleries, 2nd floor
This is the first major museum exhibition to focus exclusively on “The Pictures Generation.” Educated in the self-reflexive and critical principles of Minimal and Conceptual art, this tightly knit group of artists brought those lessons to bear on a return to recognizable imagery, exploring how images shape our perceptions of ourselves and the world. Featured are 160 works in all media by thirty artists.

green pink caviar by marilyn minter

The film still above comes from Green Pink Caviar, a five-minute video by the artist Marilyn Minter that’s on view (along with short films by Patty Chang and Kate Gilmore) on MTV’s HD billboard at 44th Street in Times Square through April 30. (Starting April 24, a 60-second trailer will also run before midnight film showings at Landmark’s Sunshine theater.) New York asked Times Square passersby for their interpretations—and then spoke with the artist herself.

As seen in Times Square, sponsored by Creative Time.
(Photo: Bill Miller)

The Reactions
“This is inappropriate and uncouth. But I can’t stop looking at it, even though it’s not appealing.”

“Is it an ad for gum? It said ‘chewing.’ ”

“I don’t care about any of the fucking shit around it—I like that there’s art in Times Square and want to see more.”

“It’s difficult to see when there’s so much around it.”

KID, POINTING: “What the fuck is that?”
MOM, ANGRILY: “It’s lips.”

“This is sick and horny.”

“In this context it’s grating, almost too shocking. Maybe people’s reactions are part of the art.”

Minter responds: We were screwing around in my studio, photographing girls spitting out candy on a piece of glass to get images for paintings—but when we looked underneath, we all thought, “Cool!” Since I feed off the fashion world like a parasite—I use their makeup artists, their stylists, even their catering services—I waited for my next commercial assignment so I could slip my project in between takes. We filmed this during a M.A.C-makeup shoot.

I called up Ford and said, “Gimme a model with a really long tongue and nice, full lips.” They sent me Louisa Taadou. For the candy, I bought a lot of colorful cake decorations: Here, I used yellow méringue filling mixed with blue food coloring. Austin Lynn Austin filmed from underneath the glass with a high-def camera, and Louisa held her breath to avoid fogging it up. I made sure you couldn’t see the eyes, because as soon as you see the eyes, it’s a different narrative.

I don’t want to sound disingenuous, but to me it’s not sexy—it’s gorgeous. It’s about hunger and insatiability, a trailer without a movie behind it, an ad only for itself.

younger than jesus @ new museum

nymag.com review by jerry saltz

In the last years of the boom, numerous artists came to the fore who have their aesthetic heads up the aesthetic asses of Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Cady Noland, and Christopher Wool. They make punkish black-and-white art and ad hoc arrangements of disheveled stuff, architectural fragments, and Xeroxed photos. This art deals in received ideas about appropriation, conceptualism, and institutional critique. It’s a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric explaining why looking at next to nothing is good for you. Many of these artists have sold a lot of work, and most will be part of a lost generation. They thought they were playing the system; it turned out that they were themselves being played.

The New Museum’s flawed but tantalizing new triennial, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” puts this kind of art behind us and points to what might lie beyond that recycling machine. It’s a big show, assembled by a big crowd: The New Museum asked 150 recognized artists, critics, and curators to recommend artists. They put together a list of 500 or so, and three in-house curators—Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni, and Laura Hoptman (a Millennial, Gen-Xer, and Boomer, respectively)—sifted through it to create the final building-filling show of 50 artists from 25 countries. A swell 564-page “artist directory,” showcasing the hundreds of artists who were seriously considered but didn’t make the final cut, accompanies “Younger” and makes this one of the most refreshingly transparent exhibitions ever organized. (It’s a kind of salon des réfusés in book form.)

look at this fucking hipster

possibly the greatest site ever!!!

picasso: mosqueteros @ gagosian gallery

nytimes.com
April 17, 2009
Art Review | 'Picasso: Mosqueteros'
Going All Out, Right to the End
By ROBERTA SMITH

In the main, Picasso only got better. That’s the take-away from the staggering exhibition of Picasso’s late paintings and prints at the Gagosian Gallery.

One of the best shows to be seen in New York since the turn of the century, it proves that contrary to decades of received opinion, Picasso didn’t skitter irretrievably into an abyss of kitsch, incoherence or irrelevance after this or that high-water mark...

“Picasso: Mosqueteros” remains on view through June 6 at the Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, Chelsea; (212) 741-1717, gagosian.com.