6.23.2006
Barminski?...More Like... BARF-inski
At what point does art become shit? You could take the literal tack, which would draw the line somewhere around the painting Afrodizzia, which actually incorporates elephant dung into its richly colored surface. You might slide a little further along the scale and decide that the subject matter itself, when brought too low, makes for figuratively crappy art. Here you might find the likes of Koons or Warhol, or a guy I featured awhile back, Chris Johanson. Then there's this guy, Bill Barminski, who charges big bucks for what are some of the crappiest drawings I've ever seen. I love them. In each of these cases, I think, brilliance emerges precisely where you'd least excpect it -- in the transformation of the truly grotesque into the truly sublime.
