Comments on: The Chapman Brothers Team Up With Hitler

By: The Shark

The Shark — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:04:07 +0000

and who says great white sharks don’t hunt in packs?

By: Mark Staff Brandl

Mark Staff Brandl — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:40:16 +0000

Hitler? Goya? A large amount of historical knowledge? Like the art which is Neo-Concept Art 101, the info they use is all Intro to History 101.

“Interparrot” is one of the best neoligisms I’ve read in ages!

By: The Shark

The Shark — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:42:24 +0000

777 -what an idiot. Why not give us your historical interpretation? Of, if not this work, why not the patterns created by maggots eating corn out of shit? A thing no doubt, you would find equally mesmerizing and intellectually challenging -’requiring a large amount of historical knowledge.’

by the way mental giant, its ‘interpret’ though inter-parrot is probably more applicable for you.

By: 777

777 — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:43:35 +0000

I find their work interesting and complex, though it requires a large amount of historical knowledge, and without said intellect, it may be hard to interperet.

By: The Shark

The Shark — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:47:28 +0000

Michael -always good to hear your voice -I would add -concerning Chicago, that perhaps more important than the small storefront/inhouse studios that have been ubiquitous here for almost two decades, is in my opinion, is an even more interesting phenomenon -artists simply using their studios and the internet to do business. Tony Fitzpatrick and I have been doing this to great effect for many years now -and then ook at the Zhou Brothers…Kerry James to the best of my knowledge is not represented by a gallery here…..

At the end of the day, when I think about showing in Chicago -as I plan to do this fall, I simply open up my studio. Its far superior in terms of a space to any commercial venue here, I can do all of the footwork to make it happen in a professional, effective manner -something rare to find amongst local gallerie venues -and best of all, the $$$ goes in one persons pocket -namely, mine.

Old models are crumbling as we speak.

As for The Chapmans…..well, to each his own -I have always found the work to be one-line, lightweight -pseudo, badboy schlock-at mega- buck prices.

By: Russell Maycumber

Russell Maycumber — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:57:21 +0000

Seems to comment more on what money can buy than anything else, I’m kind of fascinated. What a train wreck.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:52:36 +0000

Ben,

You do it, we’ll report on it.

By: ben

ben — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:58:19 +0000

if i had more money i would make a life sized hamburglar with a hitler moustache sporting a michael jackson complexion. It would sit inside a minimalist cube with a shark. the entire thing would be cast in gold and painted with latex. jeff koons could decorate the balloon animals and i hope someone rich and (saatchi or otherwise) important? would f$cking pop it. funny, right?

By: Michael Workman

Michael Workman — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:06:56 +0000

I’d like to add, despite the hyperventilation about the rest of the world’s art practices, that there’s a growing movement in Chicago to create private art spaces on a scale I’ve never seen before. And, frustratingly, too much navel-gazing in the face of a rapidly shifting art cultural standard. How many new apartment spaces have opened in the last month? While all the mid-range, quasi-legit commercial/cultural trade-offs like Boyle and 40,000 have (predictably) been going out of business en masse, I count no less than a dozen earnest new initiatives whose artists and audience are surprisingly not always about projecting a front as a naive and unrealistic expectation of somehow getting famous or rich for it. Second Bedroom, Vega Estate Presents, Elegant Mr., Medicine Park, Nightingale, Knock Knock Gallery, it’s a huge list. My vote is to hear more about these, they are as much the future of exhibition as BAS is of the art press.

By: Michael Workman

Michael Workman — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:37:39 +0000

I actually find this kind of work facile for different reasons than expressed thus far. I think using Hitler’s work is motivated by the same kind of impulse that occurs when guys spend 50-60 grand on a Harley, that is, the message behind it is that they’re being true to themselves. I think they’re thinking of Hitler as the single most transgressive figure in recent human memory and comparing themselves as artists to that atrocious social standard. Painting rainbows and interpolating all these cutsie, airy details is a mocking attempt to show their own human purity as a transcendant iconoclasm capable of overcoming an historical stigma attached to the man through his imagery.

As a lesser point, I actually like how the Chapman Brothers have reached to reclaim objects condemned as malformed or grotesque by way of a sociocultural fiat in the past: statements made about Holocaust psychology with GI Joe-scale figurines, for instance. In that work, genocide was given a sufficiently commensurate scale in its material to the minds that committed the atrocities depicted. I just don’t think this work manages what it sets out to accomplish and should have been more considerate in its approach to such a painful figure in recent human history. It’s not unjust to mistake their intention as one where so-called lesser beings are worthy of unequal treatment in our present–or past, or future–societal consciousness. This work could have been thought through much better in that regard. That doesn’t mean, however, that their aim is any less admirable for having sought to highlight the best in us all as people.

Ehh–sometimes art falls short of its prospects, like everything else.