April 29, 2010 – The Art Machine

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Well, Pepper Potts has a thing for modern art: I noticed, not only the Barnett Newman she alludes to, but also a Motherwell and a very nice Giacometti.

There is a funny little scene when the very vain Tony Stark, having sold off half of the corporate art collection, pushes his luck by removing the Barnett Newman from the wall and replacing it with a poster of IRONMAN done in the style of Shepard Fairey.

I wonder if, within a round of art collecting jokes, it is fair use to copy Fairey’s now very recognizable treatment of the notorious Obama photo?

Oh and the fight scenes with Scarlett Johanson? Amazing.

Heraclitus was right. When the waters are everflowing, you can never step into the same river twice.

It is therefore, always safe to claim that some work of art, some event, some person, is a “first” — nothing will be the same after so and so, after thus and such, after this.

The controversial Damien Hirst sale at Sotheby’s in 2008 was a first: the contemporary art market would never be the same afterward.

Go ahead and say that, Google it: you won’t lack for support. The press was, after all, in a frenzy, mounting stories about the show, Beautiful in My Mind Forever, and the subsequent two day sale, onto the background blitz of financial failures and the Lehman Brothers collapse.

But what kind of “first” was it?

Continue reading “ESSAY: How to Say Hirst Was First” →

Day: April 29, 2010

I Attended a Screening of Iron Man 2 Last Night

ESSAY: How to Say Hirst Was First