By: Ben Street

Ben Street — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:35:36 +0000

The plot thickens. The Tate has now agreed to show a later image of Brooke Shields by Prince as part of the show:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/oct/14/brooke-shields-tate-modern

By: Max Weintraub

Max Weintraub — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:02:00 +0000

Ben,
To your point about Prince’s “Spiritual America” being excluded from the Tate show: how fitting that Prince’s photograph–based on a commercial image of a pre-adolescent Brooke Shields, whose androgynous body is (mis)cast in the cosmetics and pose of full-throttled sexuality–speaks to the lack of guardianship and the perils of art-world celebrity and commerce, something that the originally proposed title of the exhibition–Sold Out–sought to evoke, if not examine. Indeed, how ironic that the exclusion of Prince’s work from the show speaks to the Tate’s lack of will to deliver the full critical review that the commercially oriented art in the show deserves, given that the title of Prince’s censored work references Alfred Stieglitz’s 1923 photograph of the crotch of a gelded–which is to say, castrated–horse.
Warhol’s diamond-dust canvases are wonderful to behold–the ultimate and unabashed synthesis of two forms of commodity, a synthesis Hirst would of course revisit in his (un-ironic?) diamond skull. Perhaps if the show stands as a testament to the prospect that today artifice is too often substituted for irony, then it might also ultimately explain the Tate’s decision exclude Prince’s Spiritual America.

Comments on: Letter from London: Pop Life (It’s The Only Life I Know)

By: Ben Street

By: Max Weintraub