One: Beginning in October, via social networking sites, in person, and here, I’ve been asking you who you think is the most overrated contemporary artist. I’ve received over 100 responses, not including the responses to those responses in what devolved into some very strange feuds (photography haters? who knew?). My main takeaway from sorting through all the answers? It’s amazing how many times people misspelled “Damien Hirst,” and it’s amazing how many ways in which that name can be misspelled. In honor of the Friday the 13th opening date for I CAN DO THAT, I present to you:
Your Top 13 Overrated Artists:
13 – (tie) Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Peyton, Jackson Pollock, Karen Kalimnik, Lady Gaga, Matthew Barney, Peter Max
6 – Cy Twombly
5 – Banksy
4 – Tracy Emin
2 – (tie) Damien Hirst, Thomas Kincaid
1 – Jeff Koons
Thoughts on the results?
Two: The artist application deadline for I CAN DO THAT is two weeks from yesterday! Submit!
And two not related to the show:
Ein: Does art school matter? Find out with the artists behind The Drop Out Kids in my latest piece for Sixty Inches From Center (Part II to this article).
Zwei: Flight tickets booked! This artist will be on the lam in: Beijing 5/4 – 5/9, Shanghai 5/9 – 5/15, and Hong Kong 5/15 – 5/22. I’ll be visiting artist studios, art galleries, art fairs, and more, and I’ll be sharing my shenanigans with you while I’m there in Hong Kong and back in the States (a plague o’ both your houses, Great Firewall! ETA after returning from the trip: there are ways around it!). …I’ll also be in the Ladies’ Market haggling for more of those $3 plastic red watches that stop working after several weeks and at this point are pretty much just chunky bracelets with numbers on them.
Do you need an assistant on your trip to China?
ReplyDelete-srm
What kind of assistance do you have in mind?
DeleteRobert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, Matisse, Robert Motherwell, Clifford Still, Joan Mitchell, Joan Brown, Ellsworth Kelly, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko
ReplyDeleteAgree Rauschenberg, Serra. Andre, Kelly and Rothco all art world celebs without much to recommend. But seriously Matisse? Mitchell? Motherwell? de Kooning. Nah, can't agree on those. All brilliant! Slip in Hirst, Emin and Koons and I wouldn't argue. Emin had a show here in Sydney in 2011 which was just pathetic.So vacuous.My grandkid could do that. Only better.
DeleteExcept for Bansky, Kincaid, and Max, I couldn't disagree more with the list of overrated artists!! But thanks for the posting.
ReplyDeleteJasper Johns is without a doubt, the most overrated and worthless artist in the history of Western Culture. Kelly comes in a close second.
ReplyDeleteJoan Mitchell's work is talentless, ugly garbage not worthy of the materials used to produce it.
Some of Rauschenberg's individual pieces are overrated, but as a whole he deserves to be included among the halls of the greats.
Richard Serra's work - though elegant - is simply a very expensive execution of extremely simple, un-inventive concepts befitting to your average mechanical engineer or commercial designer.
Ditto for the lifeless, uninspired Koons, who - unlike Warhol, who was a true pioneer and who loaded his work with multiple layers of irony - rehashes the premises of Pop with little alteration. Ditto Hirst.
Banksy actually has talent and should not be on the overrated list.
Kinkaid is cheap, vulgar trash.
And finally, the 20th Century's most underrated artist:
Leonard Baskin!
Continued...
ReplyDeleteGreatest living artists:
1. William Kentridge
2. Sarah Sze
3. Takashi Murakami
Yikes. 2 and 3 on this list... horrid. Not art, cartoons and roomfuls of junk strung together.
DeleteJasper Johns changed the face of American art forever. I am surprised you like Murakami - without the Johns, Lichtensteins and Rauschenbergs of the world, a Murukami would not exist.
ReplyDeleteI would put Damien Hirst way up there on the list of overrated artists. But anyone who puts Johns or Pollock on that list should probably look again at art history and be glad for them. We might all still be looking at formal portraiture and paintings of sweet little boats on pristine waters if it weren't for their bravery.
"Jasper Johns changed the face of American art forever."
ReplyDeleteYep, he sure did and art has suffered irreparably from his doing so. For decades since, any hack can ruin canvas with mountains of paint and call it "art". Thanks, Jasper, you've swindled us all.