Recapping New Yorker Fiction / Real Photography at Steven Kesher

Demystifying. Fun. Ostentatiously high-brow. Too short. Still a show worth seeing. 

As for how the relationships between narratives and pictures evolve, while art work is generally chosen to accompany a story, the process sometimes occurs in reverse. For example, art critic and fiction writer A.M. Homes based her story “Raft in Water, Floating” on Malerie Marder’s photograph “Untitled” (1998).

When the two appeared side by side in the June 21, 1999 issue, I recall liking the picture so much that I thought of mounting it on the wall. I’m not sure how common this impulse is, but the fact that a show based on this very idea exists suggests I might not have been alone. Though disappointingly short (just under an hour) the panel gave me a little more insight on an editorial process that so frequently evokes such reactions.

The full post is up on Art Fag City.

Robert Mapplethorpe: 50 Americans at Sean Kelly

Art Fag City just ran my review of Robert Mapplethorpe: 50 Americans.

"Surprise: not everyone has something insightful to say about Robert Mapplethorpe.That’s the lesson from Robert Mapplethorpe: 50 Americans, for which Sean Kelly asked fifty volunteers from outside the art world (one from each state in the Union) to each choose a photograph from the Mapplethorpe Foundation’s archive. There are some clear museological pretentions at work here: the volunteers’ comments – both on each work and on Mapplethorpe as an artist – appear on wall-mounted placards, while a room at the front of the gallery is given over entirely to wall text and a self-portrait. Most strikingly, a broad stripe of burgundy paint circles the gallery walls, a display tactic more at home with war or travel photography than Mapplethorpe’s thoroughly contemporary work. The tone is emphatically welcoming and warm, and clearly aimed at the same broader public that make up the volunteers. This is a show that depends on the wisdom of crowds with a striking (and probably excessive) degree of faith..."


Read the full review here.


The show is on view at Sean Kelly Gallery, 528 West 29th Street, now through June 18th.