Jerry Saltz 10 Worst Exhibitions

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Jerry Saltz

10 Worst Exhibitions

 

Now counting down backwards, ten low moments. 10. A batch of skin-scrawling quotes from a great Guy Trebay New York Times story about Art Basel Miami. The designer Silvia V. Fendi gushed, “Everyone wants to be a follower, to have the same collection,” adding, “art collecting is the new shopping.” Kim Heirston Evans, art advisor, said, “I tell all my clients to look at Baselitz again.” Aby Rosen, real-estate mogul, offered this: “The three most important worlds in culture right now [are] fashion, real estate, and art.” He then observed that art fairs are places where the super-rich “can socialize with people at their same level.” Collector Beth Rudin De Woody probably meant the same thing when she effused, “Anywhere in the world you go, you’re always welcomed.” Please pass the Kool-Aid. 

9) The Tim Burton retrospective at MoMA opened in late 2009, but packed the house through May. This wasn’t an art show—it was a ploy to pull in crowds to the museum. That said, it worked so well and was such a significant cash cow for MoMA, let’s not get too much in a huff.

8) Rivane Neuenschwander’s saccharine New Museum exhibition was sentimental, obvious, and overliteral.

7) “Skin Fruit” at the New Museum. What can I say? I liked some of the work in this show. Still, I don’t remember an exhibition being disliked this intensely by so many or causing so much controversy than this poor puppy.

6) Peter Greenaway’s bloated filmic installation at the Armory focusing on Leonardo’s Last Supper. The whole thing emitted an aura of failure, unchecked extravagance, and unresolved ideas.

5) In spite of a few magical moments, Gabriel Orozco’s MoMA retrospective was anemic and (intentionally) precious, and showed how this artist over-controls the way his work is shown, nearly strangling it.

4) A tie. Damien Hirst’s “The End of an Era,” at Larry Gagosian’s Madison Avenue space, featured gaudy cabinets filled with fake diamonds and bad photo-realist paintings of same. Monika Sosnowska’s New York gallery debut at Hauser & Wirth of twisted metal staircases was so obvious and derivative that prices between $90,000 and $120,000 seem a just punishment for those who bought them.

3) This low was a high for at least one person involved. At Greene Naftali, the outstanding Austrian collective Gelitin had all its members blindfolded, then enlisted local artists to help them make sculpture on-site. When I was there, I watched a woman artist I know bending down in front of one nearly naked Gelitin-ite, whose penis was bobbing directly in her face, from under his garter belt. Suddenly he announced to another group member, “Hans, come here. Give me a blow job.” Hans did, as the woman watched from inches away. We both just started laughing. Austrians!

2) “50 Years at Pace.” This four-venue fiftieth-anniversary celebration contained plenty of great art. But much of the work was so shoehorned in that it was hard to appreciate. The result was one of the most visually abrasive exhibitions seen in some time.

1) Robert Wilson created my definition of hell in his ludicrously over-produced, extravagantly expensive, pompously titled “Perchance to Dream” multimedia portrait of an Italian ballet dancer. Once long ago Wilson excelled in the theater. He has absolutely no talent as an artist.