Last week we showed you pics from the Hernan Bas opening at the Brooklyn Museum, and even sat down to interview the artist. So you can imagine our eyebrows were raised when we came upon this loaded charge in Ken Johnson’s review of the retrospective in the New York Times:
“At 31, Mr. Bas, who lives in Miami, is an artist of modest achievement, his career so far more promising than accomplished. So why is he the subject of a big, splashy retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum? That the exhibition was organized by and first appeared (in 2007) at the Rubell Family Collection, a private museum in Miami where Don and Mera Rubell exhibit their holdings, raises some red flags concerning relations between public museums and private collectors.”
Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green linked to the piece writing that Johnson “raises the right flags about an improper exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.” Not exactly a good sign.
Have any of you seen the show? If so, what do you think? Is his work too immature at this point for a retrospective?
And more importantly, what do you think of Johnson’s closing point:
“No doubt this is not the last we’ll hear of these issues as museum resources diminish and private collectors offer more and more tempting, money-saving opportunities. It doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, but it will never not be tricky.”
Comments (5)
Could this simply be the case that the Brooklyn Museum is providing their audience with work that they want to see? Despite how the viewer regards the current progression of Hernan Bas's work, the Brooklyn Museum has taken some great initiatives to target a younger art viewing crowd, especially with their 1stfans program. This exhibition seems more about presenting artwork that their target audiences are interested in, and less about "intellectual and ethical credibility" in their accessioning new artwork into the collection.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but Johnson's red flags seemed to make more of an issue with letting Mark Coetzee determine the exhibition given his current relationship with the Rubells and previous relationship/employment with the museum than it did with the maturity of the work. Implying that Hernan Bas's work was too immature for a retrospective seems a bit of a red herring in that it implies that the Brooklyn Museum should only be exhibiting established artists (or established in NYC at least).
Ken's point isn't that the artist is too immature for a survey, it's that the Brooklyn Museum took a show that was organized and circulated by a big private collector, a couple with a financial interest in the artist's ascension.
And thanks for the plug. :-)
I saw the show yesterday, without having read Ken Johnson's review. The same red flag raised in my head, especially when I saw how third-rate the work was. Bas is getting better as a painter, but the work is over-touted and under-developed. The P.T. Barnum effect really works for Bas, but the paintings are palette-knife kitsch with strong overtones of Elizabeth Peyton, herself an over-rated painter of extremely limited abilities.
The art world is an extremely corrupt network, and this show is a manifestation of that corruption. There are so many gifted artists who would benefit both a broader audience and the Brooklyn Museum by going out on a limb and showing their work. Bas has the support of a broad network of dealers, including Sattchi (again).
Why not a Paula Rego retrospective, or show the marvelous work of Suzanna Coffey, Sedrick Huckaby, etc?
not an art critic, but an art and museum lover. I thought this retrospective was one of the coolest installations i witnessed at the BK museum all year. I was in fact, just mentioning the experience on the last first sat this weekend. i say here here to BK shedding a light on such an untapped / unknown talent privately funded or not. i applaud and encourage them to make steps to carve their own voice as the antithesis or at the least, alternative to the met and moma more often. ESPECIALLY if these dealings keep the museum alive as a cultural hub in BK
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