Photography

With it's current exhibition of the James Franco Show "New Film Stills" the Pace Gallery continues its downward spiral as a depository for celebrity schlock. I don't think I will ever recover from the images of Jerry Saltz and Marina Abramovic dancing with Jay-Z at his Picasso Baby fiasco that the Pace Gallery hosted last summer. These are images that will haunt my nightmares for years to come. So it should come as no surprise to me that they would throw up these dreadful images by Franco that he sees as an homage to Cindy Sherman's overrated and dreadful Untitled Film Stills, a parody of a parody. In this show we have lots of dull and dreary portraits of Franco posing in drag and the shows many misdemeanors is the great disservice it does to all the great drag queens out there who take their art seriously. I admit that I found some of them silly, giggly and harmless, but hardly the stuff that the poet Frank Bidart calls in the press release "profound", and please remind me in the future to avoid this guy's poetry. Franco who has long played at being an artist sites besides the already mentioned Sherman (also in the press release) Richard Prince, Dan Colen and Paul McCarthy as some of his favorite artists and I can see why he would be taken with these showy and overblown art world blue chip dandy's. I can see the Moma smacking their corporate botoxed lips over these things and will no doubt punish us with them all over again in one of their ghastly recent acquisitions shows that they mount every so often. I should note here that I sometimes do like Franco as an actor and a pusher of some difficult film works, his "Broken Tower" which was a minimal and stark film about the poet Hart Crane that he wrote, directed and starred in is well worth a look. Happily I saw two excellent photography exhibitions (one has since closed) which removed the sour taste of the Franco from my mouth and mind. The Malick Sidibe photographs now on at the Jack Shainman Gallery until April 26th was wonderful, and rich with his black and white images from the 1960's through the 80's of mostly nightlife in Mali soon after it gained its independence from France in 1960. His photos of young people dancing are especially great and there are also many poignant portraits of young people posing with pop record albums of the period along with some portraits with hand painted backgrounds and frames. Stunning work. The other great show has since closed and I'm glad that I caught it on the last day. Jerome Liebling who died in 2011 was vividly alive in his show at Steven Kasher with large and small black and white and color images a few of which have become part of my photographic reservoir of lasting and haunting images. I'm especially thinking of his "Butterfly Boy" of 1949 which is an image of a young black boy with his coat open looking like he is about to take off. So poignant. I've always loved this image and yet I couldn't place it with the photographer until the other day when I had an aha moment. What a rich and lasting body of work this great photographer has left us with. Both the Sidibe and Liebling shows will no doubt be on my list of the best exhibitions of 2014.

(16 photos)