“Postcards from Nowhere,” which appears in this week’s New Repub­lic, is Jed Perl’s latest poison-​tipped volley against the ruling elite of con­tem­po­rary art. Some sample copy:

For Matthew Barney, Richard Prince, and now Cai Guo-​Qiang, having a ret­ro­spec­tive at the Guggen­heim is like being a Visig­oth who has been given the keys to Rome. At the Guggen­heim, the staff no longer curates exhi­bi­tions. They simply invite an artist to come in and rape the place.

And, dis­cussing the Broad Con­tem­po­rary Art Museum and the New Museum:

Dis­cussing such muse­ums in archi­tec­tural terms is like dis­cussing a sculp­ture by Jeff Koons in com­po­si­tional terms. You would be kid­ding your­self. These muse­ums are only brands designed to con­tain brands.

I’ve been struck favor­ably by some of the art that Perl hates. Whichever of Damien Hirst’s mir­rored med­i­cine cab­i­nets was hang­ing in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice back in 2006 was impres­sive enough to steal my breath for more than a few seconds.

But far and away the best things at the Grassi were the very uncon­tem­po­rary Rothkos hang­ing in a second-​story alcove. And so, having found myself almost com­pletely bored by the Whit­ney Bien­nial a few weeks back–only Leslie Hewitt’s lean­ing paint­ings held my atten­tion for more than a few min­utes there–I have to count myself gen­er­ally sym­pa­thetic to Perl’s spite.

That said, I thought it inter­est­ing to see how dif­fi­cult Perl found it to explain what exactly it was that gets under his skin about the Matthew Bar­neys and Richard Princes of the world. [Read more]