Blake Gopnik is so wrong...so wrong!
A few Sundays ago, the Washington Post's chief art critic, Blake Gopnik, authored an article titled Portraiture's Harsh Lessons - Contest Offers Unintended Primer On Do's & Don'ts.
In the article, this erudite and intelligent man, unfortunately, as he's prone to do, steps out from under his art critic hat to dwell in the dangerous waters of "I know better than you" land and dispenses wildly wrong opinions from the powerful pulpit of the pages of the WaPo.
The National Portrait Gallery is not an art gallery, begins Gopnik. Gopnik may be an eminently talented art writer, but he is not, and will never be, a gallerist (or at least a successful one anyway).
Gopnik says, "Don't think high realism equals art." I would submit that, today, one can safely say: "Don't think ____ equals art," and no one would blink. Let's try some:
1. Don't think putting a little sculpture in a jar of piss equals art.
2. Don't think smearing feces on a painting equals art.
3. Don't think a portrait photograph equals art.
4. Don't think making a video equals art.
5. Blah, blah, blah equals art.
But then he proceeds to poison the reader's well for fellow art critic Dave Hickey, by actually attacking Hickey in a semi-personal way. Gopnik writes Hickey is:
...famously skeptical about a lot of contemporary art, does his best to boost the exhibition in his catalogue essay (mostly with fiercely backhanded compliments, as when he praises its ignorance of all the current painting he actually likes).
I think Hickey's sin may be simply that he disagrees with Gopnik's views. But what Gopnik does not reveal or account for is that he is equally famously skeptical about anything that involves a brush and a canvas.
This is also evidenced by his many previous anti-realism (and anti-painting) comments in his reviews and articles, and by his now infamous lecture delivered at the Corcoran during his first few months in his new job at the WaPo, in which Gopnik declared that "painting was dead" (yawn).
Further, in response to a question from the audience (to the best of my recollection was something along the lines of "Since you don't seem to like painting, or sculpture, or drawing, or photography, then what should a contemporary artist be doing today?"), Gopnik answered "video and manipulated photography." The museum curator, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered: "Blake doesn't like pictures."
Gopnik says, "No melting watches, please. For some reason (okay, so let's blame Salvador Dali), 'modern' art has come to be equated in many people's minds with the wildly fantastical."
Uh?
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