Artoon

Saturday November 22, 2008 | 11:31 by András Szántó | permalink

Filed Under: General

   

7 Responses

1. 1. Steven Kaplan Says:
   
   November 22nd, 2008 at 13:16
   
   

   F. Scott Fitzgerald once said “There are no second acts in American lives.” He might have been wrong. But if second acts are alive and well among the YBAs, have they by now reverted to popular entertainment, to mere dog and pony shows?

   Underneath the clown makeup and wig, I really can’t tell whether we are supposed to find Hirst, Whiteread, Emin, Lucas, Ofili, the Chapmans or some hoop wielding impresario of similar pedigree.

   At least the dog looks happy. Or is it a case of the tail wagging the dog?



2. 2. Tom Flynn Says:
   
   November 22nd, 2008 at 22:26
   
   

   Isn’t this Frank Dunphy saying, “Come on, Damien, jump through the damn porthole, the ship’s going down…”



3. 3. sthornton Says:
   
   November 27th, 2008 at 13:16
   
   

   In the catalog that accompanied his 2004 retrospective in Naples, Hirst says, “It’s great to look at a Judd and it is great to look at a Flavin, but it is nothing like looking at a floating ball at a fun fair.”



4. 4. Catherine Spaeth Says:
   
   November 27th, 2008 at 19:03
   
   

   Is there a difference between being enthralled and being in thrall? With regard to Ossian Ward’s earlier comment for “Message in a Bottle,” let me propose that it may be hard to tell the difference.



5. 5. Steven Kaplan Says:
   
   November 28th, 2008 at 01:09
   
   

   Not to rain on Damien’s parade, nor to compare any of his offspring with “a floating ball at a fun fair”, but when he was flush with fatherhood he indicated that his new baby was the best art he had ever produced, thereby earning himself a soft spot in the heart of every mum in England.

   I’m sure he meant it at the time, and probably still does. My point: Damien’s a great one for a quote, a tossed off sound bite. But his each and every utterance is hardly significant. We don’t need to follow him through the looking glass and back again.

   Alice laughed, “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”

   “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”



6. 6. Catherine Spaeth Says:
   
   November 28th, 2008 at 16:24
   
   

   It is important to sort out the value of one quote as opposed to another, and Sarah Thornton’s was a good find, adequate to the work and relevant to Pablo Helguera’s Artoon. There is much to be said for a combination of skilled research, popular reach, descriptive accounting and timeliness. Different than a punch line, but not without a force of its own.



7. 7. Steven Kaplan Says:
   
   November 28th, 2008 at 17:26
   
   

   The quote I cited was made by Damien in 1995, when he was awarded the Turner Prize.

   My “punch line” would be the Robert Burns poem To A Louse, which I recommend to your improvement in its entirety, while citing some particularly pertinent lines below:

   O would some Power the gift to give us
   To see ourselves as others see us!
   It would from many a blunder free us,
   And foolish notion:
   What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
   And even devotion!

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