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Laura Cumming finally gets it right????????….

It is not only the artists and galleristas that at fault but also the reams of mediocrity served up by so called critics who happy to party on their benefactors terms until the party over…

It is obvious to anyone with eyes that art has become more vulgar and rebarbative during our lifetime, as well as slicker and quicker. Whether we will ever progress to anything better – more subtle, refined, intelligent, inventive, perhaps even original – is anyone’s guess, but these hard times have got to be propitious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/25/art

Some of us have been saying that for years dear..glad you finally seen the light..

Funny Ms Cumming didn’t mention any of this when covering some of the major players in last ten years but when the mood changes hey presto..to be fair she has shown more sense than most..not as much as Robert Hughes but then you talking different class…

How come it was so great in 2007 and so bad now Ms Cumming or are there no freebies any more, no dazzling parties, no paid tickets to the balls…?

Yes these are good times for art – lets kill all the fat and fatuous geese..and some critics too for good measure..Hughes would never have written tosh like this …..allegedly a report on the Venice Biennale of 2007 by one L.C….cake and eat it comes to mind ???

A golden crop, a vintage year: that is the main news from Venice, with a better ratio of hits to duds than any biennale in decades. This is no small matter since the Greatest Show on Earth is now so huge – 800 artists, every continent represented – that it overflows one island and spills through six others, not including the fanciful ‘occupation’ of the city’s floating necropolis by two artists demanding last rites for the Swedish monarchy.

But the other good news is that this year’s director, the well-respected Robert Storr, has organised such a strong international exhibition that it makes the tortuous miles of the Arsenale count as never before and puts the national pavilions in proper perspective. Storr’s thesis in ‘Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind’ – that conceptualism is the lingua franca of global art – may sound obvious but it’s allowed him to group together many giants of contemporary art. Where else are you going to find Louise Bourgeois, Ellsworth Kelly, and Sigmar Polke superbly displayed alongside the great film-works of Yang Fudong, the droll paintings of Raoul de Keyser and the fabulously groovy portraits of Malik Sidibe, the African photographer who has won this year’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (the prize for best pavilion is not announced until October), not to mention dozens of upcoming stars? If only the whole thing could be flown afterwards to Tate Modern what a momentous innovation that would be …

MOMENTOUS..or CRAP? Your call…over to you L.C.

Moogee waits with baited dog breath….