In today's Times there are 2 articles that left me ruminating. The first is the Richard Serra review by Michael Kimmelman. I am a fan of Richard Serra's work, but I have a bit of a hard time with the absolute adulation over the adult funhouse sensibility that permeates his late work. I've come to this opinion after studying the turning point in Mr. Serra's career - the Tilted Arc controversy. Serra's work became the cause celeb of art world intelligencia when he lost his court fight to retain the sculpture in a public square in lower Manhattan. Since then he's been on a real roll - his anti-phillistine credentials intact - with a renewed dedication to finding absolute form. This court loss was especially rough on Serra. He fought tooth and nail. Since then he's been directed and strict about where his work is going and how it will be taken care of. I've not seen the contracts, but they must have iron-clad (no pun intended) provisions that last into perpetuity or until the earth sinks into primordial ooze once again. The work can be beautiful & challenging - no doubt - but the intellectual basis for it was laid out 40 years ago, after the devastation of Europe and before the proliferation of postmodern culture. It hasn't changed - what you're experiencing has nothing to do with this time or our future - this is work looking back at a romantic materialism that no longer matters in our post-industrial world - it has become an anachronism of corporate domination - and we have seen how that policy of shock and awe works in a decentralized tribalized world. How many spirals and swirls dangerously tilting overhead must we experience? Also I don't go for all the breathlessness surrounding the fact that in almost every article written about the work there is a statement that says that YOU HAVE TO MOVE AROUND IT. Why? Why do I have to move? When did I have to buy a Disney E- Ticket in order to ride the sculpture and why are you trying to push me around with your bigness? And because this work is anti-architecture's architecture - ie: spaces not designed for human ease - architects love it. All these newly redesigned Museums and their 747 hanger-like spaces were just made for these 3 story high plates of rolled steel. Isn't it great how it all dovetails?! Yes, I'm going to the show, and yes I'll go wow, and yes I'll read the catalogue and interviews and go all girly for the butch sculptor, but after that I'll regain my composure and kick my own ass for being a fan. (there's also a reference to Pop Surrealism in the article that I found interesting.)

The other is a review by Roberta Smith of the show at PaceWildenstein called Early Film in Cubism. I thought the premise behind this show was wonderful and I really liked reading her last comment..."It should not be forgotten that Cubism, for all its multiple views, is also an art of magnificent stasis, suspension and silence. (It is not, thankfully, Futurism.) But if one of art’s tasks is to make us see differently — which Cubism definitively did — one of art history’s is to make us see art itself differently. This exhibition more than fills that job description." (italics are mine) The part about seeing differently is something that really needs to be addressed in today's world, and we've been doing just that right here! Read our posts on POMO just down the page.