Fun with oligarchs

Lindemann, posts Sarah Thornton's ten reasons why she's no longer going to write about the art market.

SE: #4 "The most interesting stories are libelous."
You have plenty of lawyers.
#5."Oligarchs and dictators are not cool."
You're an oligarch. And cool, yes?
Or are you only the son of an oligarch, which allowed you to develop an interests in art as art, and not as trophy-hunting?
10. "The pay is appalling."
Again: too cute.
None of the others are worth it.

SE: I've just looked up the magazine, the author and the article.
It's glossy fashion rag, staffed by nepotism, and the piece includes this gem:
"I get annoyed, for example, when one of Urs Fischer’s worst works (a candle sculpture depicting collector Peter Brant from 2010) makes $1.3m while Sherrie Levine’s classic bronze urinal, titled Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp) (1991), doesn’t even crack a million."

Levine is interesting for one gesture, which worked once, or maybe twice.
I remember Levine's response to politically earnest critics when she moved to Boone. She said it felt like she'd "come home". And Thornton writes for the Economist, home of Lexington, Charlemagne, Bagehot and, "Panofsky"? They should hire me to write that one. But Thornton and Levine are both women, so I guess her defense is based in feminism.

All the above reminds me why I read you and Maneker. Given the half life of most recent work (and I'm talking single digits, not even decades) art market commentary at least has some sort of foundation in fact. And pump and dump is a form of theater; Dietch was good for that at least. But if I want to read art criticism as such I read film critics.

You smiled when I shrugged off Goldstein's work as nihilist. For that I'll take Bronzino, Seurat and Gursky.

AL: all you have to talk about is money-you don't see the truth in irony- you are worse than the oligarch- because you have no money

AL: wow the piece has nothing to do with Urs or Levine or Goldstein- it's about a writer's false righteousness and hypocrisy-thanks for visiting, you get a C-

SE: I love talking about art; I'm going to the Met to look at Bernini, again.
And the market's been good to me over the past few years, so I'm not exactly poor. But I have no investment in the contemporary scene for what's called "art". I don't see exhibitions in luxury boutiques as having any intrinsic cultural value. Some of them do and I spend a good deal of my life thinking about them, as I would anything by Tarantino, Kaurismäki or Carax. You should see Holy Motors!
Don't confuse me with a moralist. My hands are dirty.

SE: Between her self-righteousness and yours I prefer yours.
You get a B-
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

SE: She gets an F
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

AL: thats really funny- you win!

AL: I'll take the grade but i'm not righteous, I'm right

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