No Apology Necessary.

image lifted from AFC who lifted it from Cory Arcangel's site

A couple weeks ago Karen Archey, posting over at Art Fag City and referencing the artist's lecture, posted an apology of sorts for Cory Arcangel's piece, Photoshop CS: 72 by 110 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Spectrum”, mousedown y=1416 x=1000, mouseup y=208 x=42, now in The Generational: Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum. Fuck that. The work does just fine on its own. No apology or explanation is necessary.


As AFC noted, Jerry Saltz calls it a "One-liner." I don't think so. Any work that makes me think of both Warhol and Jack Goldstein is no one-liner. The visual texture of the work reminded me of a half dozen Jack Goldstein paintings. The piece also made me think of the Andy Warhol painting, Reflected (Zeitgeist Series), which I saw on my last trip to The Warhol Museum. (You can read about Reflected here. No pics allowed and no images online. Thanks bad policy.) But most significantly, the work directly addresses the shift of importance to the RGB color separation required by the internet away from the preferred printing plate configuration of CMYK. The engaging irony of printing the image on paper makes me like the work even more. One last thing I haven't mentioned . . . Photoshop CS: 72 by 110 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Spectrum”, mousedown y=1416 x=1000, mouseup y=208 x=42 is absolutely beautiful. I went back about three times just to stare at it from far and close range. Even if this had been a one-liner, it would have been one helluva line. But it's much more than that. It's RGB.

UPDATE: Hrag Vartanian is all, like, "I don't think so, dude." But even in our disagreement, I learn something. Just like always. Hrag is the man.