"Thomas Ruff thinks his banal, borrowed, grainy images have a place in art history. Think again." writes Peter Conrad in The Observer, referring to the Tate exhibit mentioned here yesterday.
(thru the invaluable thingsmagazine.net)
That's a fun read there. I should probably refrain from commenting - as I'm German myself - but the author really seems to have some issues with Germans. Anyway, if you unwrap Mr Conrad's core statements from a layer of what you could call, quite crudely but in the style of our times, anti-Germanism you find that part of what he is doing is to pick up the old and somewhat boring discussion about whether modern photography is art or, maybe more precisely, what kind of modern photography can be considered as art.
What's more, - sadly enough - you could re-write the whole article and have him talk about for example painter Gerhard Richter who happened to do tons of photo-realistic paintings (which didn't prevent the MoMA in New York from exhibiting them). Conrad's idea of what art is comes across when he says
Needless to say, this basically implies that pretty much all modern art is crap unless it results in something which doesn't look like the way things are (and don't dare to write an artist's statement about it which contains too "academic" a tone!).
Interestingly enough, if you're willing to follow that kind of logic it also means that pretty much most pieces of classic art are crap because they just depict things the way things are. Rembrandt? Crap! Rodin's sculptures? Crap! But curiously enough, those critics are never willing to apply their own logic to art in general - and applying logic this way is too German anyway.
What irks me the most about this so-called review is that one could actually have a serious discussion about the merits of Thomas Ruff's work - I myself only like some parts of it. But the way Mr Conrad reviews the show will make people not go because "it's that stupid German guy" or "it's some sort of pseudo-intellectual photographer" or "if I want reality I look out of the window". Is that the idea of a review? Would it maybe more appropriate to simply ask valid questions and then invite people to come and see with their own eyes?
