Kinkade's Paintings Are Worthless Schmaltz, And The

The Reason I Love Blogs So Much Right Now Is That I Am Seeing More Critical Voices Appear, And That's Kind Of Thrilling. I Think A Lot Of Critics In Their Forties Or Even Their Thirties Have Had Their Voice Scared Or Trained Out Of Them By The Academy. I Have Nothing Against The Academy. I Think It's Brilliant And Fantastic, But I Also Think That It's Become Almost Monolithic. The Same Way A Lot Of Art Looks The Same, A Lot Of Writing Can Sound The Same And Quotes The Same Theorists.

Appropriation Is The Idea That Ate The Art World. Go To Any Chelsea Gallery Or International Biennial And You'll Find It. It's There In Paintings Of Photographs, Photographs Of Advertising, Sculpture With Ready-made Objects, Videos Using Already-existing Film.

Rumors Sound Of Galleries Asking Artists For Up-sized Art And More Of It... Everything Winds Up Set To Maximum In Order To Feed The Beast. Bigness Is Not All Bad. There's Something Pleasing About Large, Well-lit Spaces. But The Bigness Has Also Led To A Narrowing Of Sensibilities, By Making It Very Hard For Any But The Glitziest Works To Get Traction.

The Alchemy Of Good Curating Amounts To This: Sometimes, Placing One Work Of Art Near Another Makes One Plus One Equal Three. Two Artworks Arranged Alchemically Leave Each Intact, Transform Both, And Create A Third Thing.

I Wish I Could Write About Shows Outside New York. I Often Feel Like The Last Person To Know Anything, Because I Almost Never Get To Leave Town, And When I Do, I Tend To Go For Three Days Max. Seeing Between 30 And 40 Shows A Week In 100 Or So Galleries And Museums Takes Up Nearly All My Time.