ARTnews...Let The Shoveling Begin...

Do any of you read ARTnews magazine?

I have been reading it for years now. Along with a stack of other art magazines. None of them upset me more than ARTnews. It is everything I despise about the art world.

If it's not in New York the magazine ignores it. Like New York is the center of the universe. From reading this magazine you may never know that the US has a west coast, or that outside of Manhattan is a little thing called...The rest of the world!

After reading it for as long as I have I have become convinced of several universal truths about the world of art.

1) Talent has very little or nothing to do with popularity.
2) To make it to a world class level you need to be a world class BS artist.
3) You need to know a few people with more money than sense.

For example:

In this months ARTTALK.
Felix Gonzales-Torres, "Untitled (Public Opinion) consists of 700 pounds of black licorice candies, individually wrapped in cellophane and piled on the floor. It is concerned with loss--as well as capitalism, minimalism, and the body--

I had to read this several times. 700 pounds of candy piled on the floor...loss? Capitalism? Minimalism? The body?
Roll up your pants, it's getting deep in here.

Matvey Levenstein describes his paintings as "interiors that are interior". "Being a realist painter, you're in dialogue with all sorts of images, you have to liberate yourself from your context."

This is one of my favorites. "Gormley's work emphasizes the routine but extraordinary fact that human beings consist of consciousness contained in a three-dimensional object."

Last but not least, "David Hammons is a celebrated conceptualist whose actions have included selling snowballs in Harlem"

Yes, you read that right, selling snowballs in Harlem.

I have been going about my art all wrong. Before I am ever going to make it as a painter I need a blurb of BS. So here it is. The first draft of my soon to be released Bio.


Mad William...
Art isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity...


When asked about his work, William often says, “I paint inner beauty…or whatever strikes my fancy. It’s usually the same thing.”

It is an openness toward the world that allows William’s works to come to life. Whether it be urban café’s, portraits or seascapes, each work has a life of it’s own. It’s what William refers to as the “soul” of the work.

Each painting is a collaboration, between the artist and his medium, usually oil on canvas. “The canvas speaks to me…much the way Michelangelo could see and feel the figures within the stone from which he would carve.” William tries to connect with the soul of the canvas to discover the life within.

Many of William’s paintings have several previous works under them. “If I’m painting a portrait, and I discover that the canvas is really a seascape…I have to paint over the portrait. Sometimes I can have the work finished before I realize that I was wrong. At times I paint over very nice works. If it’s not right I have to change it. The soul can not be ignored.”

A very private person, William rarely makes personal appearances. “The art should speak for me, and for itself. I wont always be around to explain myself. Hopefully I shouldn’t have to. Take your time with my work. With any work. Open yourself to it. Talk to it. Listen to it. From up close and from far away.”

“Art is about relationships. Like falling in love. There is neither rhyme nor reason to it, it just happens. When it does, hold on to it. It’s a great journey. The greatest!”