This week … insights into Ai Weiwei’s photos, photos of Japan’s gangs, aesthetics of interactive space, William Gibson on cities, fake Guggenheims, superhero costumes, art thefts in Toronto, vintage street art & graffiti spots in New York.
John Yau
This month’s Brooklyn Rail didn’t just update me on the critical reception of the past months’ art exhibitions, it also kept me well-informed about the state of vegetarian burritos, Indian call centers and the misunderstood G train! The November issue (my copy is elegantly covered in a Jonas Mekas lithograph of a hand cradling a flower bud) is a primer for anyone who hasn’t necessarily seen all of the right shows and read all of the right books for the recent spat of cultural production. Taken as a whole, though, the weighty newsprint publication’s most interesting articles lay in unexpected places and concern unexpected topics.
The war of words between two major New York art critics escalated yesterday when Saltz used his very public Facebook wall to shoot back at Yau for the Brooklyn Rail art editor’s accusation of Saltz being a Koons apologist.
In the newly released edition of the Brooklyn Rail, editor John Yau takes on New York Magazine’s art critic Jerry Saltz and his characterization of America as “big, bright, shiny, colorful, crowd-pleasing, heat-seeking, impeccably produced, polished, popular, expensive, and extroverted—while also being abrasive, creepily sexualized, fussy, twisted, and, let’s face it, ditzy.” Yau asks, “Is this ‘our America?’ Or is this Jerry Saltz shilling for Jeff Koons?”
