Michel Hardy-Vallée
Membership Council
In recent issues of Harper's, I noticed that their gallery excerpts repeatedly featured painters whose tableaux are essentially painted versions of snapshots. Like everything modern, the subject is the banal, so the snapshots are items like dinner table "cheese" smiles or self-portraits in mirror with flash.
I absolutely fail to be impressed, either aesthetically or conceptually. I thought the in-jokes on the institutional nature of art died with Duchamp, but they seem to retain currency. Or have I missed something? And generally speaking, are you annoyed by the use of opto-photographical effects in representational painting? Not albertian perspective, but seeing bokeh in a painting just makes me cry.
I absolutely fail to be impressed, either aesthetically or conceptually. I thought the in-jokes on the institutional nature of art died with Duchamp, but they seem to retain currency. Or have I missed something? And generally speaking, are you annoyed by the use of opto-photographical effects in representational painting? Not albertian perspective, but seeing bokeh in a painting just makes me cry.
