Viva Regina
Seattle's Regina Hackett is my new art critic heroine.
She tackles the WaPo's Blake Gopnik jaw-dropping Takashi Murakami review and his WTF? comparison of Murakami's cartoony artwork to Goya.
Unless the Blakester actually comes from the planet Quintumnia, I think that the seed for this asinine comparison is deeply rooted in Blake's Anglocentric education in Britain, and a harmonic echo as a way of dealing with England's arch enemy through the centuries: the Kingdom of Spain.
My pop psychology thinks that the Gopnikmeister is simply channelling the British desire to diminish all things not English -- note that I said "not English" and not "not British."
What better way to bring the great Goya a notch or two than a silly comparison to a cartoony contemporary artist?
And if Gopnik wants to see "caustic" I second Hackett's call for the WaPo to send Blake to Madrid and have Gopnik take one look at Goya's painting of the Spanish Royal Family and take a close look at the Queen's face and then smell the scent of "caustic" in the air.
From the archives: Blake blows it with El Greco as well.
Seattle's Regina Hackett is my new art critic heroine.
She tackles the WaPo's Blake Gopnik jaw-dropping Takashi Murakami review and his WTF? comparison of Murakami's cartoony artwork to Goya.
Unless the Blakester actually comes from the planet Quintumnia, I think that the seed for this asinine comparison is deeply rooted in Blake's Anglocentric education in Britain, and a harmonic echo as a way of dealing with England's arch enemy through the centuries: the Kingdom of Spain.
My pop psychology thinks that the Gopnikmeister is simply channelling the British desire to diminish all things not English -- note that I said "not English" and not "not British."
What better way to bring the great Goya a notch or two than a silly comparison to a cartoony contemporary artist?
And if Gopnik wants to see "caustic" I second Hackett's call for the WaPo to send Blake to Madrid and have Gopnik take one look at Goya's painting of the Spanish Royal Family and take a close look at the Queen's face and then smell the scent of "caustic" in the air.
From the archives: Blake blows it with El Greco as well.
2 comments:
Kudos to Ms. Hackett!
I keep hoping WaPo will dump Mr. Gopnik in favor of an actual art critic. He lost my respect when he "covered" a billboard as art (with all the shows going on...a billboard?). Still, his opinions do bring chuckles, scorn form critics, and gives us all an example of how not to do it.
Well... as much as I sometimes disagree with Gopnik, I still respect him and he is indeed an erudite and brilliant writer. He just has a somewhat "traditional" high minded art critic agenda on some issues and likes to throw incendiary ideas out there -- such as this one -- to make noise... I think.
But he is without a doubt an interesting and educated and skilled writer and critic.
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