Draw this for me…

It’s hard for me to publicly bash a fellow artist but I am going to do that here. It’s not meant to be mean spirited and it’s not personal. It’s just a peeve I have had going back to my days as a student artist and later as a working artist in New York. It is simply that most of the successful gallery artists who make it in New York today are just not that talented. What makes an artist today is as much about politics and marketing as it is about talent – actually much more so.

My case in point is the canonization of Elizabeth Peyton by the New York critics.  Peyton is currently the subject of a “mid-career survey” at the New Museum on the Lower East Side. I must state here that I have not seen the show in person yet but I intend to do so when I visit the City in a couple of weeks. I tend to get a little behind in my reading and I stack up newspaper and magazine articles I want to get to in my bathroom for when I can get in a little throne time and this morning I picked up the Weekend Arts section of the October 10 Times. The big bold story was a review of the Peyton show by Roberta Smith. The Times and Ms. Smith obviously sees Peyton as one of the most important artists of our time. They must because they’ve committed a huge spread to her review. I just don’t get it. Elizabeth Peyton is a very nice,  minor artist. Her work looks great when reproduced in periodicals but does not stand up when you see it in person. She may be prolific but she is not substantial.

Peyton

 

 

 

 

 

I first encountered her work when one of her portraits entitled “Live To Ride” was featured in the Whitney Biennial. I saw a photo of it in a magazine and was intrigue enough to immediately head over to the Whitney to see it in person. It left me scratching my head as to why this womans work had even made it to the exhibit. My thinking at the time was very much in line with a post by Harry on the Daily Gusto at the time http://www.dailygusto.com/blog/archives/features/000070.php. Shortly after that viewing I learned that Peyton lived in my then hometown of Southold, New York and that again peaked my interest in her work. I began to look for her wherever I could and what I found was a nice person with what I considered marginal talent who liked to paint rock stars and had a lot of friends in the art community. But I found her work to be uninspiring and lightweight.  My view hasn’t changed over time. That Elizabeth Peyton could be mentioned in the same breath with artists like John Currin or even a artist/cartoonist like Lisa Yuskavageis beyond me. I believe she is the creation of her dealer Gavin Brown and the New York critics who suck up to those gallery owners who shop the trendiest boutiques in Soho. It’s all about the show and notabout the work.

I know this sounds like a rant against Peyton but it’s really a rant against an art scene that is devoid of real art. Peyton should be illustrating articles for Rolling Stone, not hanging on the walls of the Whitney. I used to sit in the Soho studio of my friend Paul Levitt, an abstract painter who made quirky lamps and sculptures on the side. His studio had windows that looked out into a large air-shaft and opposite his place was the studio of another, more successful painter, whose name I cannot even remember now. We used to peer in at these amazingly large, awful paintings that weer so amateurish it was laughable. The colors were muddy and thin. The imagery was childish and not well thought out. The main topic was sex but there was no sensuality or eroticism or even a sense of proportion. It was if someone had told a 11 year boy old to go play with paint on a giant canvas. Yet this person was selling these grotesques, really ugly images for thousands.

Paul’s work, though intellectually superior and vastly more ‘painterly’ could not find a buyer. The difference? One difference for sure was that the guy across the hall was a showman and had dealer support. Paul was  not a Soho character, controversiall or flamboyant. In fact he was a normal suburban kind of guy who had a very Academic approach to painting which no one on the Soho scene really cared about. What they cared about was flash. 
                           Paul and his wife, filmmaker Robin Lung in Honolulu

I felt the same about Basquiat. From the first time I saw his work I thought he was a bum without talent yet he was hugely successful. Drive and ambition for sure but very thin on talent. He was, in the end, exactly what he started out to be – a graffiti artist.  Theh real talent was Mary Boone. Which is why I was really turned off by Schnabel’s film, even though it was really well done. The film was good, the artist not so.
When I see an artist like Currin I get excited. When I see an artist like Peyton I get depressed. I know it takes all kinds but do we always have to elevate the mediocre? I know I will sound sacrilegious when I write this but I always felt the same about Keith Haring. He was a graffiti artist who made some very colorful cartoons for subway station walls and later on T-shirts and sweatshirts but really nothing more. I could never consider him a real artist in the classic sense of the word.

portrait by Basquiat

 So what’s it all about? I hate to be so cynical about art but I just feel that the really good art is not getting seen. It’s all buried in some loft somewhere in Cleveland probably. Sour grapes? I don’t think so though I do take great pride in my own ability to draw. Drawingis the basis for all fine art as far as I am concerned and if you can’t draw then I feel you cannot be an artist. that doesn’t mean everyone has to draw like Raphael but you have to be able to draw.

Katherine by Barry Shapiro

 Paul and his wife now live in Hawaii where he teaches art and has taken to a more representational style of painting. I am living in Florida doing work in pastel and crayon. I am awaiting the next generation of portrait artists to impress me and I hope they do. Ms. Peyton does not. Send me your work.