Guest Post! The Manhattan Art Review

Our good friend David Smith is at it again. He's been on me to pay attention to The Manhattan Art Review forever, and whenever I do dip in it's well worth it. Somehow, I never stick with it, probably because I am a worthless dilettante. Here's a link, which I don't think David included? TMAR.

Without further ado:

The Manhattan Art Review

The terrain of Manhattan, the putative 'center of the art world,' is uneven. It has ups and downs; it is cluttered with stuff. Stuff to gaze at, stuff to trip over, stuff to kick around. Whole lotta stuff.

Sean Tatol, art critic, sole prop. of The Manhattan Art Review, has been clambering around this terrain for a few years now, issuing periodic status reports on his blog, along with a steady stream of snide, cryptic, and/or inspirational social media posts. I did say uneven.

The latest brings us sad news: the young 'uns are confused and uncertain. How to be 'cool'?

'Coolness' is the defining, driving force that animates this hermetically-sealed snow globe of an art world engine, according to Sean. Much like the whole American southwest, Manhattan 'cool' overheated, and now it's gone and dried up!

He leads the blog piece with a dour pronouncement, "It's a truism to complain that the arts are currently in a uniquely aimless and uninspired state." The Manhattan gallery scene, you see, is synonymous with 'the arts,' and who could argue with that truism? He continues: "downtown is where many (most?) of the new things in art have emerged from for close to a century now for whatever reason." Yes, the new things.

This is all part of a preachy preamble to his usual slate of brief reviews, some a couple of paragraphs, some a couple of sentences, of current Manhattan (what else) gallery showings. And what a dismal execrable bunch these sad pitiful bastards are [*] :

"the work is wholly conventional in its nostalgia for a time when a brushstroke was an exciting problem, namely the 1940s."

"[Run] as fast as you can past Mary Stephenson's sickly paintings of plates"

"confuses self-absorbed experiences of personal significance with something that matters in the real world"

"the sadistic endurance tests of Warhol's early films and Lutz Bacher's post-Warhol game of artfully manipulating the systems of cool. I love both those artists..."

I like Sean's writing. It's clever, and sometimes insightful. He brings knowledge, an ample vocabulary, and opinions. I'm mildly interested in the goings on in Manhattan galleries from week to week. He's performing a public service! His blog, for now, is free to read.

As a visual artist, reading Sean makes me feel humbled and pensive. Am I doing the same wrong thing, even though I will never show in a Manhattan gallery? Then I look at the evidence of the shows, what may be seen of them online, and I think: maybe not.

Will Sean eventually become old (ugh), jaded, and power-mad, like the lead character in the film, "The Critic" ? 

Stay tuned!

* Not all of them, no. Sean has friends, helpfully identified amid the mud, the blood, and the beer (apologies to Johnny Cash). Sean has Manhattan clout, ergo Sean has Manhattan friends. And guess what? Some of them are artists! Nothing wrong with that.