24 Aug The New Season
Chris here. The new art season is almost upon us so that means it’s time to start talking about what kind of trends you can expect to see in abundance this art year. This year I think you should expect to see more:
Hello Kitty art on paper. Thank you Marcel Dzama.
Messy room as installation. Jason Rhoades death will have an impact.
What do you think we will see?? Comments welcomed.
Michael Maas
Posted at 12:56h, 24 AugustOrangeberg – Good topic for discussion. I personally haven’t really heard the negativity, so I’m curious about what it is that you hear. (I was pretty active in OC from ’94 to ’04 & still live & paint here). However, as an artist (and collector) who has been going to LA regularly for the last few years, I would have to say that, yes, anyone who compares OC with LA would have to conclude 1) it sucks, and, 2) because it’s OC. The key here is do you accept OC for what it is, or compare it to what it is not. I would argue that in OC the most influential collector is Joan Irvine (she told my wife she prefers dead artists because they don’t argue with her), the artist who most most typifies OC is Thomas Kincaide (most talked-about show in recent memory: T.K. at CSUF Grand Central), and the most authentic cultural institution – apologies to OCMA & LAM – is the Crystal Cathedral (“The Glory of Easter”, “God wants you to be Rich!”). With Laguna Beach being a pretty accurate representation of what really goes on in OC, anyone who doesn’t fit that box is so close to LA that they generally find easier to go to LA than to spin their wheels here. To those handfull of galleries & activists who do try to do “big city art” in OC, thanks again for saving me the drive to LA from time to time. But let’s face it, when you actually sit down & count the galleries, artists, collectors, press coverage, legal live/work spaces & lofts, etc., LA wins over OC by a factor of, what 40 to 1? Didn’t Thomas Jefferson say something to the effect of “we had to be revolutionaries, so that our children could become farmers and merchants, so that their children could become scientists and artists…”? Compare the history of LA, & then of OC and to me it looks like LA is just coming into its 3rd generation and OC is about mid-way through its 2nd, so what do you expect.
ps Last year I was talking to (international art critic) Edward Lucie Smith and he said he finds LA to be the most exciting city in the world right now for contemporary art, do to its (comparative) youth as an international city and the openess to influences from Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Michael Maas