When The Purse Strings Tighten Up At

Art Is Changing. Again. Here. Now. Opportunities To Witness This Are Rare, So Attend And Observe.

Put Yourself In The Position Of An Up-and-coming Artist Living In Early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now Imagine Trying To Distinguish Yourself From The Other Artists Living In Your Town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Or Titian. Is It Any Wonder That The Italian High Renaissance Lasted Only 30 Years?

It Took Me Twenty Years To Get Steven Parrino's Work. From The Time I First Saw His Art, In The Mid-eighties, I Almost Always Dismissed It As Mannered, Romantic, Formulaic, Conceptualist-formalist Heavy-metal Boy-art Abstraction.

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.

Ofili Is Still A Champion. It Would Be A Huge Mistake To Think Otherwise.