Yesterday Russell (study abroad friend who is still in the city) and I went to go see Get Him To the Greek...for $12.50 a person, gotta love NY pricing! The movie didn't blow my socks off but P.Diddy or Diddy Dirty Money as he now likes to be referred to as was surprisingly hilarious! Afterwards we got some pizza and discussed our big plans to rage our faces off Friday night, camp outside of Nevada Smiths (http://www.nevadasmiths.net/) in order to get a seat for the Saturday 2:30pm England vs USA match...if that plan becomes a reality I will be a) surprised b) happy c) most likely very drunk...but if not I will be attending $5 all you can eat BBQ ribs in the park!
And if I don't attend that, there is always a Saturday Hula Hooping workout that Erin and I signed up for, good for any Saturday until November. haha can you imagine a bunch of people hula hooping, for exercise in the middle of Central Park. It will be classic.
After work myself and Erica (biddy from Texas who works in retail graphic design) headed over to 51st and Lexington--in the rain mind you with one umbrella...I felt like Farnsworth Bentley (A+ if you understand the reference)--to hear Will Cotton, an artist who works in the vein of photo realist paintings, speak at Sotheby's. He was very intelligent, genuine, and extremely interesting. Main themes included indulgence and desire coupled with a certain "wonderful loneliness."
Nothing touches me more than to listen to people talk about art.
NOTE: attached images are PAINTINGS! Absolutely amazing.
xx
Haley
A couple lines about Cotton from an especially well-written review:
ReplyDelete"In Apennine, 2009–10, the depicted mountain of scooped ice cream has the dull luster of Elmer’s glue as it liquefies beneath a languid, distracted, dairy-splattered studio-lot babe.
"But whereas Cotton’s previous landscapes dripped with foreboding—from Endless Winter, 1999, to Sugar Death, 2007, whose gumdrop-gabled houses sink in sugary swamps, unfettered consumption allegorized as gooey quagmire—these recent works do not moralize as much. They also seem less weighted, literally: In Consuming Folly, 2010, pink breasts and pinker clouds point upward as two button-nosed Esther Williams–style starlets in oversize cupcake tiaras carelessly ride wind-whipped tufts of cotton candy. Threatening consequences have evaporated into blue skies, vanity now without vanitas. Cotton’s handling of oil paint alone bears the burden of seduction, especially in the masterful delivery of complex surface texture—the flaxen crystals of cotton candy or the gunpowder density of cracked chocolate."
The review (which is impossible to link to) describes Cotton's work well, but fails to discuss the most obvious weak point. Specifically, if Cotton's objective is to highlight needless and greedy consumption then he should do so in an original way. One can easily (and necessarily) recognize his superb painting ability. But the connection between consumption and sucrose seems too easy. Or, at least, too easy to sustain a career of an artist who wants to make a sustained critique of society. Art requires a constant balance between mystery and ingenuity on one hand, and the possibility of interpretation on the other. That is, the message of the artist should not be blatant (political pundits can do that explicitly enough!) but should be accessible only by the knowledgeable viewer. It should be exciting, surprising, new, and ingenious. In short: creative. Thinking beyond the technical capabilities of Mr. Cotton, is the pairing of consumption and candy creative? Or is it obvious?