Last week ARTINFO published a review of the paintings of young Houstonite Uriel Landeros (pictured), the man who is on the run from authorities after spray painting a Picasso canvas at the de Menil Collection. The review, intended to sarcastically over-estimate Landeros’s work to comic effect — “This web of contemporary, pre-modern, and ancient allusions epitomizes the postmodern quilting that characterizes Landeros’s practice” — was taken at face value by many commenters and a writer at the Wall Street Journal.
In his article “The Betrayal of Art By Artist-Vandals,” Eric Felten bemoans younger artists’ attempts to gain fame, notoriety, and, maybe, critical acclaim by vandalizing the work of older artists, especially Picasso. In support of his thesis he quotes ARTINFO at length as proof that Landeros’s stunt has resulted in positive attention.
It’s worth reprinting the entire passage here:
But the art world seems to have discovered him. This week the online magazine Artinfo lavished Mr. Landeros with the sort of attention aspiring artists would kill—or at least vandalize—for. The article, “Portfolio Review: The Art of Houston’s Fugitive Picasso Vandal Uriel Landeros,” praised his “vibrant oil painting” of a bullfight, saying it “juxtaposes this primal, ritual duel with symbols of humanity’s fundamental split between male and female traits.”
Looking at other works on Mr. Landeros’s Facebook page, Artinfo raves that he “incorporates an impressive range of symbols with a relative economy of means,” noting that little spermlike squiggles suggest “Freud’s death drive, and the Sartrean existential crisis induced by self-awareness.” Another painting is likened to the work of “Georgia O’Keefe” [sic] and Vincent van Gogh. Oh, and don’t forget the canvas featuring “lily pads floating on scorched waters” with its “environmentalist commentary on global warming.”
Felten momentarily seems to get the joke… and then not:
I’d like to think Artinfo’s writer is engaged in a terrific act of satire, spoofing art-world pretension. Alas, I fear it’s just another example of the art world swooning for the “transgressive”—that is, anything that violates social norms.
We reached out to Felten to explain the joke, but have not received a response.
For the record, ARTINFO not only finds Landeros’s act of vandalism at the de Menil reprehensible, but also finds his paintings to be, at best, thoroughly mediocre, and at worst just plain bad.
— Benjamin Sutton
PS. A note on prison rape jokes: While some of the commenters on the satirical post anticipated Felten’s confusion, arguing over whether or not our evaluation was earnest, the discussion quickly devolved into a series of insults based on prison rape jokes. This particular strand of internet comment attack is frightfully popular — as a perusal of the New York Post’s comments sections quickly confirms — so ARTINFO would like to take this opportunity to remind readers that prison rape jokes are neither funny nor clever, they will never strengthen your argument or win over opponents in a disagreement. All the deployment of prison rape jokes will accomplish, and this it will do very effectively, is to make the commenters employing them appear cruel, insensitive, and idiotic.
PPS. We have corrected the misspelling of Georgia O’Keeffe’s name in the original article, and deeply regret the error.
