AJ points to a story in The Guardian that reveals that Dinos and Jake Chapman are about to rebuild one of their dioramas that was destroyed in the Momart storage unit fire in London last May.

That makes an analysis I made a while back about the infuriating "high art" double standards (applied not only to artists, but also to processes and art). These double standards are even more infuriating as one discovers more and more variations upon the same theme. Here it is again:

The Theme:
J. Seward Johnson is a very rich man and his "art" has been brutalized by the press everywhere. I don't like Mr. Seward's work, but the main reason given in the reviewing of his work is not that Seward is a bad guy (he's very generous with his wealth towards the art world) or even a bad sculptor, but that his concept of taking someone else's two-dimensional art works - in Seward's latest case the Impressionists - and making them into a three dimensional "new" work is both kitschy and reprehensible.

The Hypocrisy:
1. As I whined about it before, the British artist brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman's best known works are based on the famous Goya etchings Disasters of War. Initially they used plastic figures to re-create Goya in a miniature three-dimensional form, and like Johnson (later on), one of these 83 scenes became a life-sized version using mannequins. Yet the Chapmans are darlings of the art world and were favorites in the last Tate show.

2. Whitney Biennial selectee Eve Sussman's "art" is to take Velasquez's Las Meninas and turn it into "ten minutes of a costume-drama feature film." It was actually quite good by the way.

3. Jane Simpson is one of Artnet.com's Artists to Watch for 2004. Her stellar reputation in the artworld has been acquired partially by her creation of sculptures based on Giorgio Morandi paintings.

Am I the only one who sees that all of these people are essentially working the same generic concept as J. Seward Johnson - but unlike Johnson, they are being lauded and praised?

What am I missing here?