Richard Prince on the Paintings of Bob Dylan

Richard Prince’s remarks about the paintings of Bob Dylan recently appeared in a blog published by The New York Review of Books, of all places. This is the staid literary/political mag that used to run simple-minded attacks on Andy Warhol by Robert Hughes, the blunderbuss from Down Under. Did I say simple-minded? Simple-mindedly vicious is more like it. It was as if the world could be made safe for middle-brow solemnity if only The New York Review of Books was snotty enough about Warhol. And now they’re showcasing the faux-hip ramblings of Richard Prince, one of the many faux-Warhols who sprouted like mushrooms in the darkness that came over the New York art world in the 1980s. Did I say faux-Warhol? Sub-Warhol would be more like it. Prince performs as many of Warhol’s tricks as he can manage. The trouble is that he considers them tricks. That is because he is too mediocre in mind and spirit to understand Warhol’s gambits as the subtle plays of irony that they were. Am I being vicious? Yes, Your Honor. Guilty as charged. But I would argue in extenuation that I am not being simple-mindedly vicious, as you will see if you work out the distinction I have made, between Warhol’s still-surprising brilliance and Prince’s rule-bound predictability..
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Prince’s remarks, which appear in the catalog of Dylan’s recent show at Gagosian, are online at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/oct/05/richard-prince-bob-dylan-fugitive-art/.
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In any case, Bob Dylan’s paintings are not bad. He can’t draw but, then, who can? His brushwork is earnest and scratchy. His colors are glum. His compositions, his handling of depth—it’s all respectable but dull. He takes his subjects from daily life in the Far East and presents them from the outside—a slide show of the exotic. So this is the picturesque in a down mood. For a look at Dylan’s paintings, see the Gagosian website. This was not an especially interesting show. What’s interesting is the light it shines on the notion of value in art..
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In recent years, Gagosian has offered exhibitions of work by artists most people would consider major: Picasso, de Kooning, Lichtenstein. He also shows such mediocrities as Richard Prince and John Currin. You see disparities like this at all the powerhouse galleries—Pace, Zwirner, and so on. The usual understanding is that the lousy artists gain some luster from their proximity to great artists. And indeed they do. Thus you hear people saying, well, Currin is no Picasso but Gagosian shows them both, so maybe Currin is better than I think he is. After all, Gagosian is very bright and he’s supporting Currin so it’s possible, I guess, that Currin is really great and I just can’t see it. Anyway, shows at Gagosian are big events, so why not just drop by, check it out, suspend judgment . . . at least I won’t be swimming against any powerful art-world currents . . . .
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Understood this way, the proximity of bad artists to great ones in major galleries is a problem of aesthetic value: the bad artists tend to be overestimated. But Bob Dylan’s appearance on the Gagosian roster shows that the problem is far worse than that. At the art world’s upper levels, aesthetic value is no longer at stake. What counts is the strength of the brand. Dylan’s is very strong. Arguably, it is stronger than Picasso’s. That is what got him into the Gagosian Gallery. And what earned de Kooning’s paintings a place on Gagosian’s walls? De Kooning’s splendid brushwork? No, the strength of the de Kooning brand. This artist’s greatness as a painter is beside the point. Likewise, Currin’s badness is beside the point. Richard Prince’s sheer cheesiness is beside the point. The point is that Richard Prince, like John Currin, is a brand. Their brands are not as big as Dylan’s or de Kooning’s but they’re big enough to be profitable for Gagosian. That’s why he shows them. Aesthetic value has nothing to do with it.

Contra Danto

Arthur Danto says that there is no visible difference between a Brillo Box by Andy Warhol and an ordinary, supermarket Brillo box. As I noted in an earlier post, this is simply wrong, as any fool can plainly see. Danto is no fool, so his error must have a purpose. What could it be? Gosh, I wonder. Danto is not only a philosopher but also an ambitious philosopher and ambitious philosophers have this in common with bright ten-year-olds: they are know-it-alls with an explanation for everything. So I wonder if Danto designed his Brillo Box error as the keystone of a total explanation of the history of art. If so, this is how it works:
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The history of art, according to Danto, is driven by a question: what is the relation between art and the world? From Neolithic times to the Abstract Expressionist era, various artists answered this question in various ways, not one of which was absolutely conclusive. Then along came Andy, who made Brillo Boxes indistinguishable from real Brillo boxes. Art and the world converged and the history of art came to an end. Gee whiz, Professor Danto, that's amazing! And so convenient. No more of those pesky art-historical problems, now that art history is over and done with.
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Danto's philosophizing does away with a large, messy subject and, even more helpfully, it shows us how to make sense of art without actually looking at it. And who, in our hectic, ADD-afflicted world doesn't need to cut corners? If you can acquire Danto's knack of looking but not seeing, it shouldn't be all that difficult to learn to listen without hearing, to read without understanding, and so on and on and on. The savings in time and energy—in other words, the increases in productivity—are potentially limitless, and isn't that what it's all about? Increased productivity?

A Graveyard Smash

For Urs Fischer, the best thing about being an artist is that you get to say which ghosts haunt your art. After a spin through Fischer's current show at the New Museum, I'd say that his favorite spook is Andy Warhol. Aside from a few exceptions noted in an earlier post, just about every image and object on view looks like a tepid reflection of something in Andy's oeuvre. I know what you're thinking. Tepid reflections are the stuff of serious art, these days. Fine, but you can't even see Fischer's work until you've brushed aside a dense forest of cobwebs and exorcised Warhol's remarkably persistent spirit. It gets a bit tedious and what, after all, is the point? Hardly present anywhere in this three-floor extravaganza, Fischer is absent even from his Self-portrait, which shows him demurely sleeping--a reprise of John Giorno sleeping in the Warhol movie Sleep.
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There is so much Warhol in this show that it needs a Warholian sound track, a pop song played over and over and over, ad nauseum, the way Andy did at the Factory. He favored hits by girl groups like the Shirelles. More suitable for the hopelessly haunted Fischer, I think, is The Monster Mash, that rock'n'roll version of the old-fashioned horror movie, as performed by one-hit wonder Bobby “Boris” Pickett.
Here's a link to the original 45, on YouTube
And this is a link to the same song, performed (sort of) by Boris Karloff.

The Stockholm Brillo Box Syndrome

Andy Warhol's first retrospective was organized in 1968 by Pontus Hulton, esteemed director of the Moderna Museet, in Stockholm—and I'm not being snarky here. Hulten, who died in 2006, was indeed esteemed, for that exhibition and many others. In 1990, he organized another Warhol retrospective, for the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. As you might expect, it featured a batch of Brillo Boxes. The show would have been incomplete without them. The trouble was that the Boxes on view at the St. Petersburg museum were not products of the Warhol Factory. Hulten had them manufactured by Swedish carpenters.
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If they were authentic, the Stockholm Boxes would be worth more than $75 million. But they're fakes. Not only that, they are flagrant fakes—a cinch to distinguish from Andy's Boxes, just as Andy's Boxes are a cinch to distinguish from the supermarket kind.
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What to do, what to do? I mean, if we believe in a free and unencumbered art market, what sense does it make to deprive that market of $75 million worth of merchandise?
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Here's my suggestion. Add Arthur Danto to the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. Why? Because Danto claims that there is no visible difference between a Warhol Brillo Box and the Brillo boxes manufactured by Purex Industries. From this silly claim follows Danto's “end-of-art” theory—more on that in a later post. The point for now is this: having said that he can't tell a Warhol Brillo Box from a real Brillo box, Danto should be willing to say that he can't tell a Stockholm fake from a real Warhol. And this is just what the Authentication Board would love to hear, given its cozy relations with the dealers who have become the approved outlets for authenticated Warhols.
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This would not be win-win. It would be win-win-win. Danto's willful blindness to the obvious differences between a Warhol Brillo Box and a real one would receive institutional recognition. By settling once and for all the problem of the Stockholm Boxes, the Authentication Board would solidify its relations with certain dealers by doing them a substantial favor. As the recipients of this favor, these dealers would see impressive improvements in their bottom lines. Yay, market! Yay, authentication games! And, above all, yay to the fog that conveniently descends upon all those who need to be blind if they are to formulate their theories about visual art!

Herr Fischer's Haunted House

Urs Fischer has turned the New Museum into the art world's answer to the Addams Family house—dank in affect, dim in concept, and deliciously creepy. Naturally, I showed up for the opening party. Wandering from floor to floor, brushing aside the cobwebs, I met so many ghosts that I began to doubt that I would ever meet the man of the hour. At this Fischer show Herr Fischer was nowhere to be seen. I saw Lynda Benglis, in strange, protoplasmic form. I saw Barry Le Va and Robert Rauschenberg and George Segal. Salvador Dali, maestro of the melted watches, was in attendance, haunting a melted piano. There was a funhouse mirror reflecting Richard Artschwager's familiar wood grain and any number of unexorcized bits and pieces of Andy Warhol. Of all the works in this overstuffed show, my favorite was Cumpadre, a croissant suspended from a length of fishing line. Guess what perches on the croissant. A butterfly. What else? Fischer's butterfly is a distant relative of the parrot in Joan Miro's Object, the benchmark example of Surrealist assemblage. Cumpadre wants us to believe it has met Miro's standard. Do not be fooled. Step back and watch, as Fischer's object sinks to the level of public sculpture, something along the lines of Homage to the Generic Surrealist.