White Noise: Overheard at the Biennial

-- By Tom Phillips

Nicholas Galanin: "White Noise: American Prayer Rug" 

Writers who cover Art are much more glamorous than we ordinary journalists; I noticed lots of leather and leopard-skin on women at the Whitney Biennial press preview.  (Faux, naturellement, but  expensive.) Two scribes were chatting in the row behind me as we awaited the news conference.  I didn't turn around, but took these notes: 

Says the one:  You know, I skipped the War-hole (Warhol) show.  I skipped it because I just don't like him. It seems to me he represents all that's worst about us -- the commercialism, the celebrity, sensationalism. Enough of War-hole, I say, let's move on!

Her friend agrees heartily, calling Andy Warhol the "father of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst." They move on. Says the one:   

-- Someone asked me to write an article about art collecting. I don't want to do it because I don't believe in collecting art.  

Says her friend:  But you're a collector yourself!

-- Oh no, I'm not a collector.  I inherited most of my art.  I mean, if I see something I like and there's room on my wall -- which there isn't! -- I'll buy it.  But that's not collecting.  

Her daughter is a senior at an ultra-prestigious Ivy League college, where she's working on the student newspaper. She told her mother she was thinking of going into journalism. Her mom's  reaction: 

-- I told her, I said:  Over my dead body are you going into journalism!

 Just sayin' ... 

--- Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips

Curran Hatleberg: "Dominoes" 

20th Century Unlimited: Beckett and Warhol in NY

"Waiting for Godot"
By Samuel Beckett, directed by Garry Hynes   
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, Lincoln Center, New York 
November 5, 2018 

"Andy Warhol -- From A to B and Back Again"
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 
Opening November 12, 2018

Aaron Monaghan, Marty Rea 

In the mid-Twentieth Century, Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” seemed like an end game. Two vagabonds meet daily by a tree, and hope for a deliverance that never comes. In Act One they decide to hang themselves, but can’t decide on the best method:

ESTRAGON:  Use your intelligence, can’t you?                        
Vladimir uses his intelligence. 
VLADIMIR: (finally) I remain in the dark.

Diversion arrives in the form of a master and slave, but their journey also appears to be heading nowhere. Master Pozzo torments his lackey Lucky, who babbles theological gibberish. Pozzo goes blind as they exit in Act Two.  Vladimir and Estragon continue waiting.