Letters to the Editor
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‘The World Is Open’
Your editorial on recent auctions refers twice to “great art” and concludes by conjuring up “the excitement … that can be created when one genius sits before a piece of blank canvas with a few tubes of paint [and] a brush.” [Oped, “The World Is Open,” November 15, 2007] Such remarks call to mind painters like Rembrandt or Rubens, however, not individuals such as the six you note for setting price records at Christie’s.
Thomas Struth, for example, didn’t lift a brush or sit before a blank canvas, he merely snapped an interior photo of the Pantheon in Rome.
Neither did Andy Warhol. His “portrait” of Muhammad Ali was made — in part, or entirely, by assistants — from a screenprint of a photograph he had taken of the celebrated boxer.
And Richard Prince merely copied his crude “Piney Woods Nurse” from the blown-up cover of a pulp novel. (See images of all three works by entering “art market watch blast off at Christie’s,” omitting quotation marks, at Google. Click on the first item.)
Rudolph Stingel’s “untitled” abstract work, described in one account as “a rectangular surface painted in tones of gray,” is just that, while Yoshitomo Nara’s “Princess of Snooze” is more like an illustration for a children’s book or a greeting card than art. (For the latter work search “artnet princess of snooze detail.”)
Finally there is Lucian Freud, the only real artist of the bunch — though no Rembrandt or Rubens.
He actually sat (or stood) before a blank canvas, brush in hand, when he painted “Ib [his daughter] and Her Husband,” asleep on a bed, both fully clothed. (Search “Ib and her husband portfolio art blog.”) “Genius”? “Great art”? You debase the terms.
LOUIS TORRES
Co-editor
Aristos
New York, N.Y.
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