Sunday, November 26, 2017

Laura Owens the Whitney Museum



This large incomprehensible retrospective of the California artist Laura Owens, now spewing out all over the 5th floor of the Whitney might very well be the worst exhibition I have ever seen in a museum or for that matter anywhere on this planet. Harsh words I know, but let me continue before I’m condemned for refusing to follow the leader and jump up and down for nothingness.
                        Comprised of campy ugly badly painted canvases many using kitschy imagery culled and pulled from our popular culture along with nods to paint by number works , untaught and naive art, children’s art and drawings that you might find scribbled in toilets along with art that can be found in the $2.00 bin at your local thrift shop or in the street. Actually anything you would find and see in the above places is much better than anything to be found in this pompous and pretentious ragged ugly show. 
                       I like camp and bad painting as much as the next one, but these are so jaw dropping bad that their meager gifts for amusing is very minor to say the least. At first I thought this show was a joke something made up by a New York Times Critic and the curators to get back at us, but unfortunately not. This show is real folks and what I can’t understand is how and why this minor in a big way artist got this ticket to ride. Owens covers the spectrum of painting: there’s abstraction, tearful representation, lousy landscape painting, weak political statements and on and on. There is even a grotesque stupid installation of Ikea like bedroom furniture in passive pastel colors of brown, orange and green topped off by large stupid paintings of bee hives done in matching colors with the little insects buzzing around which would make a perfect gift for the hipster in your life.
                      Probably the most offensive works, (and believe me there was plenty to pick from) were the many small square paintings that hovered over our heads and were hung close to the ceilings that were dreadfully painted dreary and included some with movable parts. All of the works offered none or very little interest in paint handling, color, texture or imagery, they simply laid there like a badly cooked dinner sitting in your stomach that keeps repeating itself throughout the night as you try to sleep, and nothing in the medicine cabinet is going to help it go away.
                          Most of the works looked rushed and hap-hazard lazily painted without any feelings not only for the subjects but also for the materials used. She is another privileged artist (check out the protests that were held here on her opening by working class members of the neighborhood of Boyle Heights in L.A. who are largely Hispanic and who are upset with the gentrification of their hood that is being pushed by Owens and her other privileged friends and artists) with nowhere to go but down which hopefully will be sooner than later. 
                   
Reasons (excuses) can be made for these works and many have been called up and heard using her education, her background, her sense of place and her readiness to call up previous and better artists for her inspiration along with her superficial use of what is fashionable and trendy, just check out the 500pd catalog that will bring back memories of a high school yearbook or as one critic called it “like a thick issue of Vogue.” Should we take this as a compliment, I think not.
                        







The whole exhibition is like a thick issue of Vogue, but without the pretty models. Why is this kind of painting being celebrated and held up as important work? This is thin and unimportant painting and an insult to serious painters everywhere. If you need a blast of fresh air after this disaster of a show you can head outside to one of the terraces with views that easily rival this show for intensity and beauty and after you clean out your eyes and mind head on down to the 7 th floor to check out a lavish spread of many splendid works from their permanent collection that will make your spending $25.00 admission fee feel worthwhile and help take the bad taste out of your mouth for what the Whitney has made us swallow.  The worst exhibition of 2017.

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