Dennis Hollingsworth

WhinyBabyLand

I'm enjoying Laura Lark's new blog. Reading it takes the work out of artwork.

She has recently moved to New York and I enthusiastically reccommend her reports from the gallery scene there. Las week was the Fall opening season, "Tomorrow night there are a bazillion openings in Chelsea, which I look forward to and dread...".

She's got a great voice, she's funny and when she takes down an artist, it doesn't seem like the standard nasty soul destroying evisceration that I usually encounter in this not-so-nice-fairy-land artworld of ours.

Here's an example:

Greg Bogin. Sheesh. Spare me the shaped canvas. I know everybody thinks that Stella was a groundbreaker and a genius, but I think his shaped canvases blow, too. But at least when Stella did it it was novel. Stupid, but novel. Kind of like the product "Fingos" that was introduced by General Mills several years ago. Perhaps because, at the time, the show Seinfeld was in its heyday and Seinfeld was always eating breakfast cereal out of the box, General Mills thought it would be nifty to make a cereal that was the size and consistency of Fritos Corn Chips made for dips. Kids could cram their sticky fingers into a big cereal box, presumably stuff something that tasted like Golden Grahams into their pie holes, and spend the livelong day getting the Daily Recommended Amount of riboflavin, niacin, and goo.

That was a dumb idea, too. Fortunately, it faded into the distance like my beloved Quake, never to rear its disgusting head again. It's too bad that didn't happen with the shaped canvas. Who buys this stuff? Probably the same peeps who bought Fingos.

And oh, by the way, I don't wanna hear anybody's tirade about the genius of Stella or Bogin or the shaped canvas or whatever you want to rag at me about. If you don't like what I say about shit, don't read it.

My, but that was defensive. I'm scarred for life from that last batch of posts. And I guess I lied when I said I wasn't going to write about art. Fingos can definitely be considered a form of art.

Even if you are thrown into the category "Stupid but Novel", keeping company with Stella and Fingos takes the sting out a bit... maybe it because she's taking her ego down at the same time too.

Posted by Dennis at September 18, 2006 12:42 PM