Big Brother Is Love!
This entry was a bitchy rant from the other night, but in the interest of revisionist history I thought I'd replace it by a funny Robert Hughes quote from an interview a few years ago on Salon.com. I just love the art criticism of Hughes, he is a great writer, and, in my opinion, one of the best art critics of the late 20th century; right along with Harold Roseberg. I've never cared for the criticism of Clement Greenberg, but that's been common knoweldge with most people who know me and discuss art with me.
It is conservative vs. something else, not radical. In the same New Yorker article, (Whitney Museum director) David Ross was quoted as saying, "I wonder why Bob Hughes hates me so much. It must be because he doesn't like the Warholian/Duchampian tradition." First of all, I don't hate him. I just disagree with him. I think he's a bit of a twit. He is one of those people who really apparently believes that it all began with Andy. Why is one under some obligation to tremendously admire the Warhol/Duchamp side, rather than some other side? I love art that is really fully embodied, that has a somatic character, not art that has some kind of academic, post-structuralist simper. It may be that there isn't a hell of a lot of such art around today, but one of these days this may change. In the meantime I can only go on what my preferences are. I'd much rather have Lucian Freud than David Salle, even though people think that Lucian Freud was a retrograde phallocrat.
--Robert Hughes
The full interview can be found here.
It is conservative vs. something else, not radical. In the same New Yorker article, (Whitney Museum director) David Ross was quoted as saying, "I wonder why Bob Hughes hates me so much. It must be because he doesn't like the Warholian/Duchampian tradition." First of all, I don't hate him. I just disagree with him. I think he's a bit of a twit. He is one of those people who really apparently believes that it all began with Andy. Why is one under some obligation to tremendously admire the Warhol/Duchamp side, rather than some other side? I love art that is really fully embodied, that has a somatic character, not art that has some kind of academic, post-structuralist simper. It may be that there isn't a hell of a lot of such art around today, but one of these days this may change. In the meantime I can only go on what my preferences are. I'd much rather have Lucian Freud than David Salle, even though people think that Lucian Freud was a retrograde phallocrat.
--Robert Hughes
The full interview can be found here.