#saatchi collection

[noconcessions]

[batjigsawman]

A Brouhaha Grows in Brooklyn

Lately, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has been in the news. Before this explosion of publicity, how many people even knew about the Brooklyn Museum of Art? To tell the truth, although I visited there when I lived in Manhattan, I had not looked it up on the Internet until this recent reminder of its existence. Now, the exhibit of the Saatchi Collection from Great Britain has become a major attraction/repulsion, and the crowds are lining up to pay their admission fees to get in and see this exhibition called "Sensation".

From what I can see on my tiny computer monitor, I feel ho-hum about it, since it seems to be put together specifically to make people uncomfortable or disgusted. When the Dadists did this, most of their work was funny to me, or strange. But this seems to be an exhibit that wants its audience to become upset in a negative way. I agree that art can or even should be shocking, should make people think and come away with an expanded vision and experience. So many parts of a show can do this. Sometimes it is just the announcement of the show that is done in a very thought-provoking way. Or knock your-socks-off design in the works presented. Or colors that are unbelievable. Or the post-mortem retrospective of a favorite painter that you didn't know had died.

But this exhibit? Would I stand in line for hours to get in, and then be carried along in the river of humanity through the exhibit halls? Would I pay to see this? Would I want the exhibition catalog on my bookshelves? Would I find more of benefit in it than of detriment?

I don't know... Take a look like I have. Would you be happy to have gone to this show?

On the other side of the coin: does Mayor Giuliani have any right to censor this show and deny promised (and probably already-spent) funding to one of New York City's best-known public museums? Does he have the right to impose his moral standards on anyone else? And did the director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art get his wish of more publicity and more interest?

Did this show prop up sagging museum attendance?

It seems that everyone wins .. perhaps with the exception of the viewing public. The "unknown" artist who used elephant dung, for whatever reason, has had at least a flash in the fickle pan of international art fame.

[theartobject-blog-blog]

Saatchi and the Chinese Century

This past summer, I was working as an editorial intern at Modern Painters magazine. There were odd jobs: sending packages, fact-checking articles, and listening to the brilliant editors say brilliant things about art as casually as most people talk about buffalo hot wings and dipping sauce. One day, I was asked to transcribe an interview with Okwui Enzewor, the genius Nigerian critic and curator. In listening to the tape, I picked up some heavy knowledge: we are living in the Chinese century. Yes, I knew it already-- the Cai Guo-Qiang retrospective at the Guggenheim, the hot New York fuss about Yue Minjun. But it was another thing entirely to have the situation spelled out on audio tape in a beautiful, deep, thick Nigerian accent. Enzewor said very pointedly that the 19th century was the European century, the 20th was the American century, and now, in the 21st, we are living in the Chinese century. We better get used to its aesthetics-- and fast. I remembered Enzewor's speech as I visited the new Saatchi gallery this weekend, keeping the idea of Chinese supremacy in mind while viewing "The Revolution Continues: New Art from China." Overall, "The Revolution" is a knock-out non-stop mind mess when you consider its implications. These symbols, these images, this specific visual lexicon-- all of it is old hand to millions of people. But where do we begin, the disadvantaged aesthetes who had the misfortune of being taught from the book of old white European men? Throw me a monkey, I will tell you it's a monkey. Throw the same monkey at a girl from Shanghai, and she will say "During the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 476 BC), the dignified official title, marquis with the pronunciation 'Hou', was the same as the monkey's. The monkey was thereby bestowed with auspicious meaning." We are screwed. Saatchi's collection is thoughtful and provocative. I was especially moved by the paintings of Shi Xinning: repetitive imaginings of a re-written European history. Here's Mao on Peggy Guggenheim's Venetian patio. Here's Mao written into the Yalta conference. Oh! Here again he has popped up at the McCarthy hearings, pointing his fingers at the Jews who run Hollywood. If the Chinese century pans out as predicted, then perhaps Xinning's vision will not be too far off. After all, how could the most powerful country in the world not have been involved in the significant turning points of the 20th century? We know they have to power to make anything seem real. Again-- we are screwed.