
Author
Charles LeslieImage
JOSEPH RADOCCIA The Encounter, 2008 Oil and Acrylic on panel 32 x 20" (8 panels)
PAST
ART, ACTUALLY !: Drawing, Painting and Sculpture
Mar 12 - Jan 19, 2008
ART, ACTUALLY!
by Charles Leslie
From THE ARCHIVE: No. 26: Winter 2008:
A few weeks ago I went to two reputable galleries in Chelsea where, in one of them, I saw three bicycle tires, an ordinary broom suspended by fishing line and several pieces of an old broken chair adroitly arranged in what I was told was “a complex interrelationship”. The ensemble was priced at $9,000 and to my utter astonishment had been sold. Later that same week I made my first and possible last visit to the new New Museum on The Bowery at Prince Street. At least the building itself is worth looking at.
The bizarre marriage of the trendy and dog eat dog capitalism is doing untold damage to and profoundly deforming the status of art as we enter the 21st century. Often accomplished with a high degree of technical skill and simply vibrating with “theory” much of what is passed off as art nowadays has nothing to say and one cannot help but feel that the buyers have been duped.
In Art, Actually! we sail against the modish wind by offering an array of work by artists who can actually draw, paint, sculpt and otherwise create images and objects of genuine artistic value which can be appreciated for years to come—and in ways that a pile of hay (in another Chelsea gallery) strewn with lurex rags and splattered with sequins can never hope to achieve.
Art, Actually! is just what it says it is—Art. Actually.
Related

PAST
SELDOM SEEN: Never or rarely seen works from the permanent collection
Nov 17 - Jan 23, 2010
more
PAST
LESBIANS SEEING LESBIANS: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography
Sep 14 - Dec 22, 2011
more
PAST
Nude In Public: Sascha Schneider: Homoeroticism and the Male Form circa 1900
Sep 20 - Dec 08, 2013
more
PAST
MEDIUM OF DESIRE: An International Anthology of Photography and Video
Dec 18 - Mar 27, 2016
more
PAST
RUBBISH AND DREAMS: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble
Sep 29 - Jan 27, 2019
more
PAST
ROBERT GIARD (1939-2002) Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay & Lesbian Writers
Apr 25 - May 20, 2020
more