François Lemoyne, Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, oil on canvas, 149x113.5cm (from The Wallace Collection)
In case you heard a loud POOF echoing around the art world recently, that was the sudden deflation and disappearance of the façade of museum curatorial omniscience. In short, someone just admitted they don't know what they're doing.
As reported over at Art Fag City (for once I'm not picking on Paddy!):
The new fifth floor exhibition [at the Whitney Biennial] "Collecting The Biennial" showcases work collected by the museum from the biennials over the years.... [It] provides a good starting point for the biennial discussion, highlighting both good and bad work. "It shows how taste changes," Francesco Bonami explained while gesturing to a gaudy Julian Schnabel painting he says they thought was "forever." "It was not," he concluded succinctly.
Holy crap, I think Frankie just admitted that those clothes the Emperor was wearing a few years back, they might not have been so nice. Now if only he and Gary Carrion-Murayari could generalize this and realize that what they're choosing now is also crap, things might start improving at the Whitney.
Hello, Chris. Very apropos painting for your post --- time saving truth from falsehood. Are you becoming an optimist on the possibilities of artistic justice? Time does seem to have a way of putting everyone and "forever" in our place.
Actually, I am writing to ask if you have seen Schnabel's movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"? I think it is an amazing film in which he pulls off the near impossible by making a very worthwhile and yes, even enjoyable, film trapped in the body and mind of somebody who is completely paralyzed except for his left eyelid. I will not venture an opinion on Mr. Schnabel's paintings (I am one of those boring milquetoast "if you don't have anything nice to say ..." bloggers), but he does strike me as a compelling film maker.
I didn't always illustrate my posts, but I saw the way my blog is listed on a few sites and noticed the illustrations can be eye-catching. So now I try to illustrate my posts with something. When I don't know what to put there I go to Google's image search and throw in a word or two and see what comes back, then browse. For this post I used the single word "truth" and then followed along, which eventually led me to Lemoyne's painting. I like it. I'm not sure it's a great painting or anything, but it's pretty enough, and Truth has quite the potbelly, which is adorable.
I try to be optimistic. It doesn't always work. You know what George Carlin says about cynics, though -- scratch one to find a disappointed idealist. That's me. I just want everything to be better. To be as good as it can really be. Let's dig ourselves out of this dialectic!
Anyway. I haven't seen "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". I had downloaded it but never got around to seeing it, and then the drive it was on died. But it's on my list of movies to see.
I have, however, argued in favor of Julian Schnabel's films. At least on Franklin's blog and probably elsewhere. I think "Basquiat" is a beautiful film. It surprised me -- I expected it to be terrible, this movie about a bad artist and loser by one of his friends, but the movie itself was compelling. I thought I'd change channels in a minute or two and ended up watching the whole thing. As far as I'm concerned, if it took Schnabel's art career to enable his film career, it's an overall win.
Chris, they don't have to know what they're doing, or rather, they don't have to be good at what they're supposed to do, because being good is no longer the point. The same is obviously true for artists, so it all fits.
I posted this for you, Jack, because I thought it was wonderful that someone would finally admit to what you say about them. When I saw what Francesco had said, I thought of you immediately.
I'm sure it didn't escape you, Chris, that the Fag lady's take on all this is rather different from yours.
Well, yeah, but that's okay. I mean, opinions differ, and if she thinks the "Collecting the Biennial" is "EXCELLENT" what can I say? I don't think anything related to the Whitney Biennial's been even remotely EXCELLENT in...how long have they been having one? The last one I personally went to was before I was writing about art, back in 2004, maybe. Not sure. It was a complete waste of time, except that I went with my friend Cory, who is fun to hang out with. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from him in a while. I should bug him.
Chris, your problem (well, one of them) is that you don't adopt the opinions you're supposed to have. This is no way to get invited to blogger panels, you know. I mean, it's OK to bash the Whitney, within fashionable bounds, but you always, always make it clear that you're still hip and, uh, legit, if you get my drift. Haven't you learned anything from this Fag business?
Not only am I a slow learner, there are some things I simply cannot be taught. How to be hip is, alas, one of them.
Well, nobody said you had to be a natural at it, just put on a tolerably convincing show of with-it-ness. I mean, a lot of these hipster types are patently full of it, and not even their own kind truly takes them seriously or respects them, but at least they're "in" and get invited places.
And why can't your damn captcha thingie be as user-friendly as EAG's analogous feature? Look into it.
Why don't you have a permanent account already? It takes about eight seconds to get one unless you already have an account under OpenID, Yahoo, Google, or WordPress, in which case it takes two seconds. Your browser can remember your username and password for you so you don't even need to tax your brain with it.
I'll think about it. But your captcha still sucks.
By the way, FYI, Monsieur Lemoyne, who was quite successful in his day and became official painter to Louis XV in 1736, committed suicide in 1737, a few hours after he completed the painting you used for this post.
Regarding the captcha, yeah, well, it's what comes with Movable Type and it saves me from comment spam. Maybe if I redesign the site I'll find a better one.
Regarding Lemoyne: Well, that's cheery.
The only trouble is the Wallace Collection, which ought to know, lists the date of the painting as unknown. So how can we be sure he finished this painting just before his suicide?
I suppose it's possible the Wallace Website is incorrect about its own holdings. I've commented before on their lousy proofreading, and, as an institution, they did allow Hirst inside. Could be the place is run by the human equivalent of overbred dogs with tiny brains.
Here's the entry from the Oxford Dictionary of Art, which is rather more reliable than an institution (the Wallace Collection) that would stoop to show ghastly, shitty Damien Hirst paintings:
Lemoyne, François (b Paris, 1688; d Paris, 4 June 1737).
French painter. He was one of the leading decorative artists of the day, continuing the grand tradition of Le Brun but adapting it to the lighter taste of the court of Louis XV, to whom he became official painter in 1736. Much of his work can be seen at Versailles, notably in the Salon d'Hercule. He was a man of wide pictorial culture, learning from Rubens in his use of colour and from 17th-century Bolognese painters in his clarity and grace of drawing. The polished fluency of his style belies his disturbed personality; he committed suicide a few hours after completing Time Revealing Truth (1737, Wallace Coll., London). Boucher was his most important pupil.