14 Comments

Congratulations! I'm thrilled for you. The venal machinations of the pseudo 'establishment' should indeed be ignored. Genuine artists usually ignore them regardless.

Expand full comment
author

One gets the sense that the establishment is not very well established. That's less true of the old museums, perhaps, but the rest of it is a house of crepe.

Expand full comment

And also, systems suck everywhere. People with insecure ego boundaries get an ounce of leverage, and commence using that leverage to bully and screw over every perceived threat within reach. That's the human condition. Calling out every instance of egoic bullying in your cohort can feel energizing, but spiritually it's like grinding your hand onto a hot stove for a living.

It's okay to stop.

Btw, I had a dream where I was juggling some sketchy situation, with questionable people, and you literally had my back. Thanks.

Expand full comment
author

DMJ, in contrast to Artblog.net, has an alternative vision to sell. As far as I'm concerned the SBMA, UVA, and the Folkwang wanted to help me promote Aphorisms for Artists this week by putting two of my blurbers in the news. It's like when you so entertainingly lambaste bad interior design. After the Dissident Museum launches, another book and a couple of graphic novels are in the hopper. The deeper the portfolio grows the less necessary it is to call out the mainstream.

Expand full comment
author

Also, glad I could assist you in your nocturnal time of need.

Expand full comment
Feb 4Liked by Franklin Einspruch

There's something print-like about Curcio's work. If it is based on photos or film stills, that would be analogous to prints after paintings, which is a transcription rather than copying.

Expand full comment
author

He is indeed a printmaker. Check out the link above to see more work.

Expand full comment
Jan 31Liked by Franklin Einspruch

CONGRATS! I look forward to all this. I especially like "Instead there’s a need to build art communities at a sufficiently reduced scale that values can be shared among their members." YES

Expand full comment
Jan 31Liked by Franklin Einspruch

Congratulations - well deserved!

Expand full comment
Jan 31Liked by Franklin Einspruch

That’s great! Dissident Muse um!

Thanks for sticking up for us.

Kerry

Expand full comment
Jan 31Liked by Franklin Einspruch

Embroidery work by a man, especially if he's white, is of course most unlikely to interest the monoculture, assuming it could even countenance such a thing (unless it's a Grayson Perry kind of scenario, which I expect it isn't).

Expand full comment
author

You're correct, and it's not. Embroidery by a man with images of Yakuza films and the goth-girlfriend memeplex, no less. David's treatment by the curatorial community in Boston has been, at times, dishonorable. This isn't the only kind of show that the Dissident Museum is going to do, but it's starting there for a reason.

Expand full comment

Needless to say, if the artist were of the "right sort" in non-art terms, the work would quite probably have attracted more attention, even apart from its quality.

Expand full comment
Jan 31Liked by Franklin Einspruch

Congrats my friend! I saw this earlier this morning from the FAIR in the Arts announcement, and it looks like you're in good company along with the other recipients.

Expand full comment