Conspicuous Consumption: Food TV and the Louvre Experience

17Aug09

“Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch” is an essay by Michael Pollan recently published in The New York Times Magazine.  I am the “couch” part of this article. Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef , Ace of Cakes, The Next Food Network Star, and Hell’s Kitchen are shows that regularly consume my time and conversations.  [...]

Filed under: contemporary art, critique, interdisciplinary, museology, museums, popular culture   |  2 Comments
Tags: art history, chopped, consumption, Culture, food, food network, food tv, icons, louvre, masterpiece, museums, popular culture, spectacle, spectator, top chef

The Raft of the Medusa and the Potential of Prospect.1

20Dec08

Benjamin Zeitlin’s Glory at Sea is a short film that tells the story of a rescue effort to save the drowned victims of Hurricane Katrina (featured in Wholphin 7).  To execute this mission, a cast of nameless characters create a boat from a pile of their remaining possessions: a bathtub, a rust-colored car without wheels, [...]

Filed under: contemporary art, destruction, exhibition, peripheral vision   |  7 Comments
Tags: american, art history, benjamin zeitlin, biennial, gericault, glory at sea, history, hurricane katrina, kara walker, new orleans, prospect.1, the raft of the medusa, wholphin

Fake Honesty, Honest Fakery

17Aug08

This morning on NPR, Daniel Schorr discussed the “fakery” of the fireworks and lipsynching of the Beijing Games, bringing to mind Dave Hickey’s examination of the authenticity through Las Vegas’s Liberace Museum, “A Rhinestone as Big as The Ritz“:
“[Friends who visit Las Vegas] prefer the page of the landscape to the text of the neon. They [...]

Filed under: art theory, authenticity, critique, excess, interdisciplinary, peripheral vision   |  1 Comment
Tags: ancient art, art history, authenticity, beijing olympics, caesars palace, casinos, dave hickey, elvis, fakery, footprint fireworks, las vegas, NPR, replica

Critical Dogma and Two Seattle Museums

27Jun08

In the June/July issue of Art in America, Irving Sandler contributes a strong article arguing against a revisionist understanding of the Abstract Expressionist movement being largely motivated by the Cold War ( “Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War” 65-74). Some of the article’s most poignant arguments emerge when Sandler discusses the apprehension, and often [...]

Filed under: art theory, critique, local   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: abstract expressionism, art history, criticism, modern art, revisionist art history, seattle museums, theory