Today’s art is “global marketing swill”
Jed Perl, the art critic for the New Republic, has penned a terrifically long and bombastic broadside against the contemporary art scene, with pot shots aimed towards Koons, Murakami and Hirst amongst others, but sparing no one, not even the museum-going public, ie you and me.
I do not really believe that the educated audience that surveys the work of Koons at BCAM and the Metropolitan, or the work of Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum, sees some deep meaning in these overblown comic-book heroes and factory-produced baubles. A lot of the visitors to these shows have a knowing, ironic look fixed on their faces. They can see that what is presented as art with a universalist message is really just global marketing swill…
Surprisingly little reference to photography save calling out an apparent overabundance of Cindy Sherman at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in LA. I would have expected the large-scale photographers to be taken to the woodshed, but I’m luckily photography is still beneath notice in the larger fine art galaxy.