WILHELM SASNAL

Whitechapel Gallery, London, 14th October 2011-1st January 2012

Wilhelm Sasnal isn’t a very good painter and his subject matter is trite, shallow and random, so there is a certain inevitability in the fact that he is popular with Sadie Coles and has been given a major exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery. The public gallery in service of driving up value for the private art market again. Apparently Sasnal couldn’t think of a name for his exhibition, either. The publicity /poster/book cover image for the show is Sasnal’s flat, spiritless and defiantly unrevelatory copy of ‘Bathers at Asnières’. Georges Suerat already painted that, mate, over a hundred years ago. His one is nicer. No need to do it again.

I’ve asked before and I ask again, semi-rhetorically: why is Wilhelm Sasnal, who directly and uncreatively copies paintings and photographs, a fine artist with art world imprimatur… but Bob Dylan is ridiculed for doing the same (albeit without it impacting his sales or gallery representation much), and the Chinese hacks who directly, uncreatively copy paintings and photographs at Dafen painting village (for example) aren’t regarded as fine artists at all?

NO REASON TO MAKE IT, PUBLISH IT OR WATCH IT

Brilliantly biting new “competition” from IOCOSE: find the most worthless video on YouTube (http://notubecontest.com). “The NoTube videos should have no value whatsoever! This means: no funny videos, no narratives, no video art, no views, no links, no keywords.”

What I was most struck by, however, were their criteria for deeming a video to have no redeeming value:

1) No reason to make it.
2) No reason to publish it.
3) No reason to watch it.

I’m guessing that this is part of the point they’re making, but forget the YouTube drivel of anonymous yokels: how many so-called art works have we all seen that dovetail neatly with these three rules for assessing worth? I’ve seen plenty. It’s such a simple and useful formula, one that artists could and should also bear in mind when they’re making something. Why am I making this? Why do I need to share this with the world? Why would anyone be interested?

PAUL GRAHAM: PHOTOGRAPHS 1981-2006

Whitechapel Gallery, London, 20th April-19th June 2011

Although artists, including photographers, generally exhibit little or no anxiety with regard to what exactly constitutes art, the same can’t be said for some curators. Before anyone even gets to see Graham’s exhibition they’re confronted with a huge block of text explaining somewhat defensively that what the visitor is about to see is the work of a “fine art” photographer. I’ve never seen anybody introduced as a “fine art painter” or a “fine art installation artist”. Many pioneering scientist-photographers of the Nineteenth century saw themselves as being firmly in the tradition of Western art, so I think it’s high time gallery people stopped getting their knickers in a twist about a medium that’s coming up on two hundred years old. Is there really anyone attending a contemporary art institution (or even an art museum like the Victoria and Albert) who doesn’t accept that photography is an art form? The fact that there’s such a thing as commercial illustration or comic books doesn’t seem to make anyone neurotic about painting. Nobody needs to be told the difference between an illustrated advert for fabric softener in a women’s magazine and the Mona Lisa.