About Time...

Cudlin is back in the CP with a review of the Kehinde Wiley show at Conner Contemporary.

These are such a kewl couple of paragraphs (that an older art critic could have never birthed) because they deliver a great insight into the show:

As he once stated in an interview, "We live in an age where the distinctions between high art and popular culture are finally starting to melt. Thank God. In a sense, that’s the strength of my work."

As it turns out, it is. Wiley’s art is all about the erosion of such differences—between past tradition and present moment, masculine display and effete decoration, Fragonard and FUBU.

And (I for one) love having a skilled painter as an art critic (as well); an intelligent person who can quickly note that:

...it’s almost hard to believe that Wiley uses oils, not acrylics. There is no slow accumulation of glazed transparent layers here — only the flat immediacy proper to commercial illustration.

But it is this paragraph that drives the show home for me:

The tendency of much postmodern art has been to reject old hierarchies by making artistic activity more conceptual, less dependent on any one ancient medium’s troubled history. Wiley shows us that sometimes the most radical act is to continue with the seemingly insupportable.

Bravo Wiley, Bravo Cudlin, Bravo Painting.