A Brooklyn Culture Mafia

[sus]

Basquiat is like what freshman art school students like and then they get relentlessly made fun of by their peers for having entry taste and eventually give it up

 

[version]

i remember you saying you look like Barty crossed with the lad from the film 'Kes'

I didn't say that. I said I looked like a BTEC Barty because we had similar hair and facial hair at the time.

 

[sus]

Basquiat is like the Arcade Fire of painting

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

It's interesting "Basquiat's overrated" is like standard artschool faire, not even a hot take

that's exactly what makes it a hot take

not that I'm going to go into an even more prolonged Basquiat defense, if he's passe w/art students who cares (tho art students do as a rule have the least trustworthy opinions about art)

as long as ppl acknowledge him as a full human I'm cool with them thinking his art is great or terrible or anything in between

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Basquiat is like the Arcade Fire of painting

you're certainly not letting me down with the hotness of this take

also isn't Arcade Fire yr favorite band

 

[shiels]

yeah that's a good one

I have UNITY tattooed on my chest. it's the very first tattoo I got, when I was 15 (yes, 100% from the Operation Ivy song). I was embarrassed by it for a long time but the older I get the more I think I unintentionally stumbled into exactly what you're describing, a guidepost etched onto the body - the meaning of "unity" not being exactly fixed but certainly overtones of racial unity, unity against kind of stupid artificially constructed barriers in general.

 

[sus]

I want someone to make Padraig do a thread of overlooked white artists and overrated POC artists

 

[sus]

you're certainly not letting me down with the hotness of this take

also isn't Arcade Fire yr favorite band

look I liked them in HIGH SCHOOL okay

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Was it ever confirmed he didn't actually produce Beat Bop?

I don't think anyone actually knows or will ever know

my impression of "producer" is more that it was like a collaborative art project than he actually made the beat the way we would think of a producer now

tho he was in that wot do u call it Downtown NY scene experimental band with Vincent Gallo + some cool Downtown 81 type dudes

and they have some stuff that's kind of proto-lo fi beats to chill to, so who knows

 

[sus]

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I want someone to make Padraig do a thread of overlooked white artists and overrated POC artists

if you're limiting that to fine art it will be difficult bc it's only the last few decades that fine art has started acknowledging POC in like, in any way whatsoever

outside of v occasional exceptions like Frida and the Muralism dudes

overlooked white artists wouldn't be hard, there's an endless supply

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I mean come on if you know anything about the art world you know entrenched structural racism still is there

like w/o checking so I could be wrong but I'm almost certain every person you mentioned in this thread is white

edit just tbc: meaning that positions of power in the art world are overwhelmingly white, not that gus is only fascinated with white Brooklynites

 

[linebaugh]

Basquiat is like what freshman art school students like and then they get relentlessly made fun of by their peers for having entry taste and eventually give it up

Youre in Wisconsin now. Blast the Arcade Fire, unfurl your basquait prints. No one there can hurt you

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

"David Hockney"

the favorite artist - or idk, one of them - of the most artist art world dude I know

he's basically a non-terrible version of the ppl in this thread. we used to work together then his art started selling for a grip and he moved to Europe.

he hipped me to Hockney back when I first started getting into art a few years ago. "Hockney goes" I remember him putting it, and I would agree.

I don't think you can really say he prefigures vaporwave etc cos the intent is so different but he does feel like an analog precursor of that aesthetic

it wouldn't surprise me at all if he's big w/art students etc rn, in addition to as always the superrich asshole collector wing of the art-industrial complex

 

[sus]

I am quite close to the artworld, and almost every gallery or public institution I'm aware of has put enormous amounts—often even a majority—of its time and resources, the past half-decade years, to POC art & events, primarily POC art pushing a very specific worldview and set of politics (i.e. there are no vaguely conservative POC artists given platforms).

That's just an observation, I'm not gonna wade into whether that kind of reparative stance is "good" or "bad" because shit doesn't matter, the entire visual art culture is moribund, an enormous speculative bubble built on nothing, with no sense of what's important or what matters

 

[sus]

I've been to multiple viz art events that involved the crowd chanting "fuck white people" and "whities are pigs." I've sat through three-hour long unprepared political monologues by talentless cardboard cutouts pulled from the slums of liberal education to represent their "people." I've seen calls for paintings by white artists to be burned, +1'd by guilty, idiotic, white liberal 50-year-olds who lack a cause now that their nest is empty.

It's all a stupid status-mongering culture that should be abandoned, never talked about again, something polite circles don't mention.

 

[sus]

I'm in a bad mood so it's a bit unfair but

You came up in a different generation than me, the last 5 years of "how the art world comports itself" are probably very different than the 15 years before that

I think you can be right about the long view and I can also be right about the short view, where individuals fall over one of each other to "get out of the way of BIPOCs" and virtue signal til their hands are swollen

 

[sus]

It's true that everyone mentioned in this thread is white, and structural racism is definitely a part of that, but it's also true that companies can go out of their way to include a certain demographic and still under-employ that demographic for reasons beyond/before its control/purview—histories of housing, cultural segregation, etc

 

[version]

I think this is the only Hockney I like.

 

[vimothy]

I've been to multiple viz art events that involved the crowd chanting "fuck white people" and "whities are pigs."

hahaha, really???