Having It Both Ways--Art Theory Division

It is sometimes said--by me, for example--that the art theorists headquartered at October magazine have never come up with much in the way of theory. Their writing is a collage of bits and pieces brought back from Europe, and you know what collage is: the amateur's medium. Unless you're Picasso or Kurt Schwitters, making a collage is like keeping a scrapbook. Nonetheless, the October theorists are brilliant. They have figured out how to have it both ways--how to placate even as they attack. So, as they rack up credit as daring radicals, scourges of the establishment, they hold down university positions, sinecures at the heart of the establishment they so daringly oppose.

Black and White in Color

During the '80s, Allan McCollum figured out how to have it both ways. Not only did he make paintings but he also managed to get the stamp of approval from the death-of-painting ghouls at October Mag. So clever. He did it by painting dozens, hundreds, probably thousands of smallish all-black paintings, which he framed in generic white frames—sort of death-of-the frame frames, if you see what I mean. A wall-full of these objects always looked quite spiffy. It all came back to me at the Marian Goodman Gallery, where Gerhard Richter filled an entire wall with smallish, mechanically produced paintings. It's Allan McCollum in full color—just as pretentious, just as impoverished, intellectually and emotionally, and, needless to say, quite spiffy.