Posted inArt

An Artist Creates the Ruins of America

Danh Vo’s objects are unremarkable without history. We can debate until Miami freezes about over the place of artworks that don’t do much visually, that make references so opaque you have to a) be a specialist or b) have the work explained to you by an outside aid. Vo’s challenges to our assumptions about art are as frustrating as they are exciting.

Posted inArt

The Impossible Curation of Schiaparelli and Prada

It’s inevitable not to compare the new show at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute to last year’s blockbuster, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, however unfair that might be. But it doesn’t matter, because Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, a pairing of two disparate designers that gives far too much precedence to the latter, falls flat, regardless of what preceded it.

Posted inArt

The Immaculate Conception of Damien Hirst

“You do know, don’t you, that even well-meaning people are pawns for the powerful, and when it comes right down to it, humans are best thought of as oversized prawns waiting to be plucked from their beds of ice? Personally, I like to methodically squeeze the plumpest and pinkest ones between my thumb and forefinger, really smooth them out, before swallowing them whole.”

I dreamt that I met the famous and powerful Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper. She was tired of lying around in Rose Hill Permanent Rest Stop and wondered if she could get her old job back.