For my birthday, family took me to this show at the Boston ICA, where I marveled at the detail, twists on Warhol and Ono, and all manner of originalities. So where does Schjeldahl get off? Oh right, it’s pop not art, that’s a pretty clear distinction, no problem there. (Whatever happened to Vandalism Is Art?) This gives Shepard’s very prodigious progression from and through appropriation into mammoth, commanding voice the shirk. It makes the New Yorker ring very old school, especially since a lot of Warhol fans thought his inimitability lay in his method and not his effect. Turns out the method can be pretty rad, dude. You want the Supply and Demand book, too, a double whammy: great imagery, beautifully photographed in a lot of random urban settings, where Andre takes on guises both menacing and prophetic. Free Shepard.
rock culture approximately
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