Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Rear Guard



If art has an avant-garde, Clement Greenberg once famously said, it must also have a rear guard. That rear guard is kitsch, and its leading practitioner of kitsch in Los Angeles today is J Michael Walker. Above is his sanctifying portrait of Gustavo Dudamel, manipulating the shell of the Hollywood Bowl to outfit The Dude in a mandorla of grace.

3 comments:

  1. Please familiarize yourself with Mr. Walker's work. I think, taken in context, it might alter your opinion of his Dudamel portrait. His art is definitely not "kitsch", though as the saying goes, "you say that like it's a bad thing" :-)

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  2. Oh poo on you, Mr. Joseph F. Mailander.

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  3. You don't seem to get it. What Mr. Walker's work doesn't have is the usual obvious heavy handed irony, deliberate lowbrow (I like some lowbrow- but most "lowbrow" artists try too hard), or the usual overboard on the nose deviant stuff ( I like deviant art, too, but once again too many try too hard) flooding L.A. galleries right now, and hipster art logs like Lost at E Minor. What he does have is nuance, wit, and symbolism, and that has been sorely lacking in the art scene for decades.

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