came more than once. Her expression never December. Of course, the apology? Not his. Not magazine’s art critic, the ubiquitous Jerry Saltz, be speaking to an insider audience. Certainly 21. Now to the five little paintings shaped changed, nor did her posture. She didn’t cry, by a long shot.... looks as if he’s being played by Paul Giamatti, that seems to me the case when faced with like vaginas, five little paintings that relate to but people in the audience did. This is what and Shia LeB and Jay-Z have ripped off (or the possibility that Shia LaBoeuf might be copies and values from high to low. The the art world calls ‘durational performance’. 11. This gets me thinking about five little paintings, borrowed from) Marina A. Both have been trying to make ‘art.’ But, one of the things I shaped like an eye, a slit, a vagina.... In fact, inspired by her The Artist is Present stare-down, love about art (not in quotes) is its ability to 22. I am looking at them now, and something 5. The invitation to Jay-Z’s performance says: their vaginal suggestiveness is impossible the one memorialized in the HBO documentary, compress complex ideas and address them like a wire runs diagonally through them. Each Plagiarist “The performance is an experimental and to ignore. Hold on and I’ll get to how they the one with the Tumblr, “Marina Abramovic´ in one piece, that it can ask us to ponder seems strung against a gray sky that gives collaborative one, where rap’s own history connect to Shia and Marina and Jay-Z. Just Made Me Cry”, the one that has made her the these ideas. It’s what I love about those five them the eerie look of hovering UFOs. They are with endurance and duration will be at play.” keep those paintings in your mind. Here’s an most famous female artist today, where people paintings. It’s why every day since I first saw all so small you’re forced to get close to see Is Present image of them: lined up for hours on 53rd Street waiting to them I’ve been thinking about them and what what’s going on. One is a painting of a photo, sit and stare before her. The experience was they have to say about art now and art-making one covered in something heavy and brown BY JENNIFER supposed to offer up something real, a genuine now, feminism and performance and fame and like burlap as if what’s beneath needs hiding. exchange in this our age of social networks originality and values and China. That too. I’ll A small hint of light emerges from the cloaked KABAT and supposedly ‘not-real’ exchanges. Shia was get to it all, I swear. Keep those five paintings rectangle as if it’s shining and can barely be impassive as he addressed us (well, the ‘us’ in your mind. concealed. Another is an iPhone photo and the 1. Shia LaBeouf cries wearing a brown paper who queued for him on the streets of LA. That fifth is a painting combining all four copies of bag on his head with two holes cut for eyes. ‘us’ isn’t actually me). 19. First though, Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga naked. copies. They are, of course, about originality, Jay-Z dances for ‘art world luminaries’. The But what is he offering ‘us’? Somehow Lady Gaga naked in a stream in upstate New about value(s), but there is also they way they The Abramovic Method #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2013–2015 • five dancing and crying are performance art — or his entire play at fraud and copying, originality and York. Lady Gaga naked wrapped around a look unmistakably like women’s genitals (not to works: acrylic, charcoal, Polaroid on canvas/ acrylic, stolen from it. 6. Jay-Z only lasted six hours. Shia a week. linen, linen thread on canvas/ acrylic on canvas, apology seems like he’s trying to say something giant crystal. Bathed in sunlight she straddles mention the one that’s covered as if it needs to painted by Yin Xunzhi, Dafen, China/ archival digital bigger, something that he thinks might be art, the rock, her brown hair rumpled and tousled, be hidden....). I can’t separate them from when I 2. LaBeouf sits in an art gallery in Los Angeles 7. In “Picasso Baby”, Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, print, mounted on Sintra/ oil and charcoal on canvas, but what? plate glass windows behind her. I promise first saw them hanging in an art gallery’s office. as fans line up for hours down the block and sings, “Fuck it I want a billion/ Jeff Koons 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm) each. this is not some restaging of 1970s soft-core I didn’t want to look too closely. Partly because through an alley waiting for the chance to sit ballons. I just wanna blow up/ Condos1 in my 15. His plagiarizing Daniel Clowes looked at porn. This is the Abramovic´ Method. It’s a they were in the office and asking to see what’s alone before the star and stare into his eyes. (Or, condos. I wanna row of/ Christie’s with my They’re by Rochelle Feinstein. They’re also first like straight-up theft as if he didn’t realize cross between EST and ESP, New Age and hanging behind closed doors feels like intruding, what you can see of them through the paper missy, live at the MoMA/ Bacons and turkey called The Abramovic Method and serve as taking someone else’s words was wrong or yoga. It involves crystals and deep breathing and though gallery offices are generally considered bag). Cameras aren’t allowed. They’re smuggled bacons, smell the aroma.” a meditation on originality, truth, abstraction. that he might get caught, as if he, a star, were openness. It’s also rigid. You have to follow each extra exhibition space. Then there’s the subject, in. He remains impassive. The bag is tear-stained. She riffs on Abramovic´ to get there. I riff on above the realms (and rules) governing you step exactly. (I love that something designed which resembles what we women generally He wears a tux. As you enter, you’re offered a 8. Marina Abramovic´ arrives at the shoot in her paintings to get there. and I and was literally celestial. Then, there’s to make us open is so controlled. That’s very hide, while one painting is actually hidden. Plus choice of props to bring with you. They include a limo wearing a long black gown. When he the skywriting an apology in the skies of LA funny). Everyone who sees Abramovic´’s pieces painting only a vagina and isolating it from the angry tweets written on paper like messages performs for her, they stare at each other, 12. A funny thing happened on the way from A on New Year’s Day. And, wearing a bag on his going forward will have to be trained in her rest of a woman’s body makes it harder to from fortune cookies, a whip, whiskey, candy locking eyes and foreheads. She is barefoot.2 to Z, from Abramovic´ to Jay-Z. Here are some head scrawled, “I am not famous anymore” at eponymous method and sign a contract saying contemplate than a traditional nude, which and a Transformers toy. Apparently you can more of the lyrics of that song “Picasso Baby”: the premiere of Nymphomaniac at the Berlin she will agree to ‘commit’ to watching them comes with centuries of art historical tradition do with these implements — and Shia — as 9. Afterwards people in the art world describe “It ain’t hard to tell, I’m the new Jean Michel/ Film Festival. Or the second act of skywriting, for at least six hours. Naturally you will have (read male gaze).6 you wish. Throughout he doesn’t respond. He feeling “punked” by it all, punked not their Surrounded by Warhols..../ Twin Bugattis outside “Stop Creating” and a third time skywriting a to surrender your phone, watch and camera simply stares and cries. But, if you can’t see the word but mine. A friend writes to me: the Art Basel.” dictum to “Start Creating” again. It came on in advance. tears, is he really crying? Also, he’s an actor; he the heels of his LA performance art ‘show’, In the film Lady Gaga and Marina A should be able to well up on command. The sign Jay-Z had water, many 13. Art here is just another commodity. where he sat in a room for eight hours a day are both in coveralls sitting on bar stools in a on the gallery door declares the piece is called breaks, adulation, clapping, Abramovic´’s performances have often been letting us confront him. So, what is going on stream, their backs to each other. I’m not sure #IAMSORRY. ego-patting, not to mention about duration and endurance, suffering, not here? Plagiarism, joke, art? Or maybe he’s just quite what this says about the method. I like the glam life he raps about exactly something that’s easy to buy or sell. trying to distract us from his bad sex and bad streams in upstate New York probably more 3. One summer afternoon the ‘art world to return to, and the artist It’s hard to commodify stabbing yourself or accent in Nymphomaniac. than the next person. There’s one outside my luminaries’ line up for hours outside the Pace from whom it is borrowed burning your hair and nails in a fire....3 What’s kitchen door, but there’s something confounding Gallery in Chelsea. Once inside they crowd (in this case from Marina) there to purchase? Meanwhile much of the 16. James Franco believes it’s art. He wrote in all this, the control — demanding people around a plinth and bench cordoned off by is a flattered and glad art market that you hear about — the high-end an editorial defending it in The New York Times. wear lab coats and surrender their phones a shin-high rope, the sort museums use to participant — what sort of a with the big fairs and big money, the auction Apparently LaBeouf believes this too.5 and watches to experience her work. Is she keep people from touching the art. Behind the simulacrum is this? Can we market, say — has become the ultimate luxury reinforcing the separation, the kind of quasi- rope on the pedestal Jay-Z appears. Members use that word? good for the private-jet class. Unhinged from 17. On one of the preview days for the 2014 religious experience we’re often promised in of the audience are invited one-by-one to sit any use-value, art’s worth is entirely arbitrary, Whitney Biennial, one of the curators whispers, museums? Is that good? The Abramovic Method #2, 2013–2015 • acrylic, linen, before him on the bench as he performs his Shia’s performance may be part of his long and that is its value, its power and status. “Go upstairs; James Franco’s getting a tour on In the video Gaga starts out not naked 10. linen thread on canvas, 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm). song “Picasso Baby” over and over for hours ‘apology tour’, as I’ll call it, for his plagiarizing I don’t want to suggest that Jay-Z the third floor....” Franco likes art, and the art but in a white jumpsuit and white socks lying in the gallery. comic artist Daniel Clowes. The apology has isn’t interested in art. He’s supposed to be a on the third floor was often ravishing like Sheila on her back, repeating “aaaaaa”, like she’s included skywriting and tweeting his abject serious collector, and I don’t think the video Hicks’ Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column, dangling warming up her voice. Next shot, she is in a 23. Rochelle Feinstein is an abstract painter, 4. The two events are copies, maybe fakes, sorrow. Only there are numerous earlier apologies equals who he is in ‘real’ life. Also, I want ‘the its cascading threads from the museum’s stream, face covered in two yellow cones, and and when she first heard about the Abramovic´ based on Marina Abramovic´’s arduous 700- Shia made for other things — and all of those art world’, which often seems like some fairy coffered ceilings onto the floor. it starts raining. My takeaway, Gaga’s vocal Method on National Public Radio (NPR), she hour long The Artist is Present performance in apologies were plagiarized as well, lifted from tale realm set apart from the real world, to move exercises make it start raining. Then she walks was confounded by it. It was an “enigma” (her 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York a writer at GQ, David Mamet, Yahoo Answers, closer to it. Here, though, Picassos and Condos 18. With art it can feel at times like the joke naked through a field to a forest and bends over word), something she had to work out, but her (MoMA) — also the name of her retrospective Kanye West, Charles Bukowski.... Just to keep and Basquiats are interchangeable with just so is on us. (Here I mean me too, all of us, not a downed tree branch, and ends up in a bed way of working it out is different than mine. She there on at the same time. She sat in a chair all this straight and make it clear: we have Shia much Cristal and so many Benjamins. “I want the ‘us’ above of the generalized, implied covered in crystals. paints. I write. For her, abstraction works as a in the museum’s atrium, always wearing a apologizing in February 2013 on Twitter to Alec a Picasso in my casa, no my castle... I’m an audience). With its interest in institutional way to probe something that demands scrutiny, long flowing dress, hair always braided and Baldwin. That apology? Ripped from GQ. Then, asshole....” Uh, yeah.4 critique and conceptual values and all sorts 20. By the way, I never find James Franco on where subjects — her own life, even — can be always over her left shoulder. Day in and day he apologizes for the apology using Mamet, and of doubling that can occur in a single piece, the third floor of the Biennial, just the excellent translated. At a moment when abstract painting out she stared into some 1,400 people’s eyes so it goes.... He debuts his film plagiarized from 14. So, we have crying Shia and Jay-Z bobbing. contemporary art can seem to require an Sheila Hicks’ and other abstractions. He is is making a comeback and women are being individually. Crowds lined up for hours. Some Clowes in May at Cannes and gets caught in In the gallery during the filming, New York explanation to decode it, and it can seem to unsurprisingly also a fan/friend of Abramovic´’s. heralded as the ones behind it, I find her take I’m With Her 151 Verbatim Hoc Moda/The Abramovic Method on abstraction particularly powerful. It retains who has written a nuanced book on — and In a village where countless fake Here’s an image of a real Vermeer a connection to our world while pushing the apprenticed in — Dafen herself. Van Goghs are produced, his story seems to Lacemaker in the Louvre. materials and media in which she works. channel how we look at artists, the longing 28. Dafen has become a popular subject in and pathos and self-destruction we ascribe 24. In 1996 she made a series called Sucked, Western media. In the village everyone copies them from Van Gogh through Pollock. “But Tucked and Fucked generated from expectations famous paintings making cheap versions for Yin”, Wong writes, “constantly plans to leave of women, beauty and bodies. Tucked was our homes, hotels, businesses.... In 2005 The Dafen village in order to become a ‘real artist’.... made by skimming the skin off the top layer of New York Times ran a headline: “Own Original He has shredded all of his original paintings buff-colored oil paint as it dried. Fucked was a Chinese Copies Of Real Western Art!” Read because he has never been fully satisfied with round, hooked rug (the sort that you can find in the sentence aloud. How does it sound? Thanks a single one. Thus, Yin says that he is not a ‘real kits at Jo-Ann crafts) stretched, photographed, to that exclamation point and contradictions artist’ because he has no works....”9 In a sense, transferred and enlarged to a silkscreen printed like “original” and “copies” and “real”, I give Rochelle destroys her pieces too, cannibalizing on a painting. Sucked was made of thick netting it an ironic inflection. Oh, the privileged point them to make others. to which even thicker paint was applied, giving Polaroid test, 1997. of view the Times has.... The second sentence it the fleshy feel of a membrane. Nailed to the describes a 26-year old who’s painted 20,000 31. Looking at Yin as an equal creator, Rochelle canvas then stretched and pulled back, the And, what does Luminosity mean? I Van Goghs. There are words like “garret” and plans to give him a fifth of the proceeds if her mesh twists and opens like skin that’s been have no idea. Really. But Abramovic´ says: “It’s “paint-splattered”. “Socks and freshly-painted painting series sells, though she also paid him flayed. A Polaroid was taken for the silkscreen really a work about loneliness, about pain and canvases dry side-by-side.” Somehow this his fee for his work. of Fucked, and then afterwards, no one talked about spiritual elevation. About luminosity and fits with how we think of China, all industrial Attributed to Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Flute, about the series. It disappeared. The Polaroid about the transcendental quality of the human espionage, internet theft, copies, cheap 32. Because contemporary art can be difficult 1665–1670, oil on panel, 7.8 x 7 in (19.8 x 17.8 cm). was filed away, and she brought it back out a being in general.”7 handbags on Canal Street and notions of the to decode, often our only way of understanding it is through value, through what something Johannes Vermeer, The Lacemaker, ca 1669, oil on canvas, costs. Art demands an act of translation, and I tried to write a whole novel about stealing the 9.6 x 8.3 in (24.4 x 21 cm). money is a translation we all know, so the Girl with a Flute. She’s “attributed to Johannes She paints. I write. For her, easiest way to come to terms with art is Vermeer”, as the museum label reads. Her through the silly money the press often quotes origin is in doubt, well, more than doubt. That’s She’s bent over her task, focused. The netting when talking about art. It’s as if art’s complexity what the “attributed” is code for. She’s not an of her cap reveals her hair; two slender threads abstraction works as a way to is only comprehensible through how many actual Vermeer. Then there’s The Lacemaker. are held between her hands on tiny bobbins, zeroes follow how many commas after a and she’s absorbed so completely she doesn’t dollar sign. But, what gives art value? Aura? notice us, but even in such a diminutive painting probe something that demands Originality? Some magic, some kind of juju, — less than 10 inches wide — we still see the or something ‘real’, like staring into Marina (or grain in the wood of the table where she sits. Shia’s) eyes? scrutiny, where subjects — 36. Adam Lerner, Director of the Museum of 33. I feel like I’m saying nothing original at all Contemporary Art (MCA) in Denver mounted a here. That could be a joke. But this stuff about show four years ago of what might be Russian her own life, even — can art and aura, Walter Benjamin wrote about in abstract fakes. Or, they could be real. They could 1936 in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age be student work made early in the twentieth of Mechanical Reproduction”. century or copies or simply impossible to be translated. attribute. No one is likely to know the truth. In 34. When we see art it’s rarely free of an From Russia With Doubt, he writes, “I was couple years ago when she heard about the original and value. In all this is a judgment of artist’s name or context. All that information sure about the quality of the paintings. However, Abramovic´ Method on the radio. 26. Originally staged in 1997, Luminosity the copies and copyists. Copycats — not artists, helps us orient ourselves around a picture and I was uncertain of their status as art, which Rochelle has a way of reusing work, was re-enacted for her MoMA retrospective. possibly not even craftspeople. know how to see it. And, seeing itself is a risk. triggered in me a feeling of uncertainty about cannibalizing and repurposing it, using a painting Holland Carter, The New York Times’ chief Looking at art brings a risk of falling in love. art in general: What is authenticity in art? What with a photo to talk about copies and the nature critic, thought her restaged works had lost 29. Fuck, Fake, Fate. Fake: Just the word has We risk being moved; we risk getting punked. strange set of rules can make such delightful of originals. It also strikes me as potentially self- something in the museum, that the copies an ache in it. It might come from the Dutch to We risk getting fooled, we risk feeling fooled; and vital paintings inauthentic? By provoking Anonymous Artist (Imitator of Johannes Vermeer), sacrificing, even masochistic, as if something were somehow empty. Also if you think her slap, to sweep, to wipe and the German for we risk not getting it. And what does that risk these questions in me, these paintings, which The Lacemaker, c. 1925, oil on canvas, 17.5 x 15.75 in of her very self has been cut off. To be an Method is intense, she’s even more demanding fegen meaning “polish”. Do you think Dickens’ give us? (44.4 x 40 cm). might all be forgeries, somehow felt more artist (nay to be a woman artist) and destroy of her re-enactors. So, this became the kernel Fagin is linked to this? A Google Books usage honest than anything else I encountered.”10 your own work and reuse it — partly because it of Rochelle’s series: a silkscreen of a stretched chart shows the word’s steady re-ascendance 35. In the National Gallery of Art in Washington, hasn’t sold and hasn’t gotten enough attention hooked rug made to look like a vagina; the in literature over the last 80 years. Apparently it DC is my favorite Vermeer of a girl holding a It’s not even on view, but in the National Gallery’s 37. In the same book Lerner tells a story of — can seem akin to cutting off a part of yourself enigma of the Abramovic´ Method and how one was first used in English as criminals’ slang in flute. She stares at us directly with a bald look collection. She’s too embarrassing with her a collector of Russian avant-garde art, who in and cannibalizing it. She doesn’t see it like copies, how one sends out information; plus the eighteenth century. and rabbity, lashless eyes. Her triangular hat mousey bob and receding chin, her eyes that searching for paintings found one covering a that though. Here she was thinking about Luminosity, Abramovic´’s own nudity and what appears vaguely Chinese. It’s painted with implore and the pilgrim-looking collar on her window in the barn of a painter’s nephew. The a 1997 performance piece by Abramovic´, it means to restage a piece that makes such a 30. In Dafen, Rochelle worked with artist Yin rough stripes that don’t match Vermeer’s fine dress, which actually makes it look like a maid’s collector wanted to buy the painting: “‘No’, the Luminosity, where she was balanced on a public display of nakedness. What’s the cliché, Xunzhi corresponding by email through Winnie strokes, and her mouth is open on the edge of uniform from the 1920s. She doesn’t even nephew said, ‘This one I can’t sell. It will rain, bicycle seat mounted on a wall, arms rising a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, with Wong, who has written about him “as a painter a word. Behind her the tapestry seems more seem to be doing a reasonable facsimile of and everything will get wet. Bring me another and falling in a diaphanous light. The bicycle five pictures I get about 4,000 words.... with great artistic ambition”.8 In a narrative that like a Gauguin. Plus, the lines of the hat and tatting lace. The portrait is funny, a fake. It piece of plywood, and then I’ll give it to you.’ seat looked like an arrow pointing up, and could fit the sorts of myths with which artists her face are half in shadow. The darkness is was probably painted by Han van Meegeren, So I had to go back to Moscow to look for a the piece seemed so focused on her vagina, 27. The third painting in the series was made are lionized, he studied painting, moved to so stark I see in it the ghost of Manet. I’ve one of the most famous forgers who flogged piece of plywood.”11 on her being suspended and strung up by it, in Dafen Village, China, from a photo Rochelle Beijing, didn’t like the ‘bohemian’ pretensions long been obsessed with this woman, with frauds to Hermann Göring, but look at her. It’s that it appeared what was really on display sent a painter there. She found the painter there, left and wandered, searching much as the hat and Gauguin tapestry and sharp line amazing to consider that anyone thought she 38. Value and values: art to one is plywood was her sex. with the help of art historian Winnie Wong, any artist would, and settled finally in Dafen. along her face. was genuine. to another. I’m With Her 153 Verbatim Hoc Moda/The Abramovic Method http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-12-19/ 39. In 2014, another Chinese artist, Pei-Shen 43. In the same way The New York Times two lectures the same night, one on Big Foot, Originally published online for The Weeklings, the-other-side-of-an-80-million-art-fraud-a-master- Qian, made the news. Living in Queens, he was could write “Own Original Copies” with an another on Jung. People think the Big Foot March 2014. forger-speaks unknowingly making fake modernist masterpieces exclamation point, just a few months ago one expert a dupe while the Jung one is applauded. 13 Johnson, Ken, “What Puts Soul in a Masterpiece? that sold for millions. It reminds me in a sense of of its critics reviewed Pei-Shen’s paintings. The Someone asks the Big Foot scholar why no 1 George Condo is considered a painter’s painter, far Pei-Shen Qian’s Paintings Examined,” The New York Times, Yin in Dafen. Pei-Shen’s story is full of aspiration critic, Ken Johnson, describes them as derivative one has ever found a body. “Because they bury more obscure than Francis Bacon or Jeff Koons. 31 December 2013. 2 Now she’s decried Jay-Z. She’s “disappointed”. She 14 Johnson, Ken, “What Puts Soul in a Masterpiece? and longing, and comes with a double tragedy. and “soupy”. “Nostalgia seems to be the unifying the dead” is the answer. People laugh. Lerner Pei-Shen Qian’s Paintings Examined,” The New York Times. 13 “will never do it again”, she said in an interview with Now in his seventies, he came of age during the mood of Mr. Qian’s paintings.” tells me and I laugh. But, the Jung scholar Kolja Reichert in Spike Art Magazine. “He just completely 15 Johnson, Ken, “What Puts Soul in a Masterpiece? Cultural Revolution, and as an artist he wanted interrupts and talks about Carl Jung’s interest used me…. This is very different from Lady Gaga, Pei-Shen Qian’s Paintings Examined,” The New York Times. to be modern — contemporary — to make art 44. Johnson goes on to say Pei-Shen’s “paintings in our shadowy dark side and the irrational. She for example, who has done great work for me. Just that mattered, that challenged norms, but his raise interesting philosophical questions: Why talks about how Modernism has pushed that by having 45 million followers, she brought all these work itself didn’t necessarily meet the world’s should we value a painting known to be made by all aside and says, “Look, isn’t this amazing. young kids into my public.… I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I expectations of what that should be. Had he a certain esteemed artist more than a painting Here’s someone in our midst searching for the had no idea that this would happen. It’s so cruel, it’s been a decade younger, he’d be part of the era that is phony but is nevertheless practically monstrous version of ourselves. And, if they incredible.” From Spike Art Magazine, 18 May 2015. of Chinese art stars we celebrate now. The tale indistinguishable from the authentic work? Why found Big Foot, scientists would dissect it and http://www.spikeartmagazine.com/en/articles/i-will- reminds me of that lost generation of women is a real Motherwell worth millions of dollars test it, and we’d suddenly have order, science never-do-it-again 3 like my mom, married in the late 1940s and early more than a fake just as good?....”14 explaining exactly what it was, the missing In something that might seem familiar to Shia fans, in another early piece Rhythm O, 1974, Abramovic´ lay inert 1950s, who were left out as feminism swirled link, evolution....” for hours, letting the audience approach, prod and poke around them. They couldn’t quite keep up, torn 45. He reduces this equation to “soul”. This, It’s this looking for our dark side, her with implements including feathers, honey, a whip and between what they were told they should want I think, is what Walter Benjamin meant by aura. taking risks, the irrational and inscrutable that a loaded gun. All of which she related to her own life.... and what they had. art can bring up. If we let it. But, Lerner says, 4 Finally ending my boycott of the video, I’ve watched it several times writing this, and in it Jay-Z has a Aura = soul. Art = plywood. “Soul” is a “We crave certainty. What museums do, in 46. playfulness that’s hard to criticize as he pulls kids onto 40. His story has so many elements readers weird word, weirder than “aura” by half. part, is create that, but how beautiful that the bench with him. And, he presents an art world far love: fakes and the ache, an immigrant story, something out there remains nebulous.” He’s more integrated and color-blind than it might seem coming to New York with your dreams, working 47. This sentence is perhaps weirdest of all in talking about the Russian paintings that are at your average gallery opening including artists like as a janitor, going to school at night. He studied at Johnson’s review — and by ‘weirdest’, I mean impossible to authenticate. Fred Wilson, Lorna Simpson and Wangechi Mutu. He also name checks Samo, who few people realize the Art Students League, painted in Washington most troubling. was Basquiat’s alter ego/grafitti tag before he started Square, talked people into letting him do their 50. What I’m trying to nail down here is painting, that is canvases, and not walls. portraits until one day a mystery man asked him The artist’s soul is somehow elusive, spectral, but art is hardly ever free from 5 LaBeouf posted this on Twitter: “Performance art has to try a version of some modern painter. Pei-Shen in the work, and because the structures around it, the things that help been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as can’t remember which one. He pulled himself up great artists are supposed to us identify and understand it and fix it in place well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. My twitter by his bootstraps, joined the American Dream, have great souls, there’s more with wall labels, didactic text, an artist’s name, @thecampaignbook is metamodernist performance bought a house in Queens, but he didn’t make it. soul in their creations than a review.... But, what’s the difference between art. A performative redress which is all a public there is in mediocre efforts.15 an artist and crafts person? Between Rochelle apology really is. All art is either plagarisum [sic] or 41. He said in an interview: “The FBI said they and Yin and that narrative of fakes and frauds? revolution & to be revolutionary in art today, is to be were done by the hands of a genius. Well that’s 48. He ends by suggesting an exhibition of What makes art? Aura? Soul? The mystic reactionary. In the midst of being embroiled in acts of 12 intended plagiarism, the world caught me & I reacted. me. How strange it feels!” all Pei-Shen’s fakes, similar to the show of the mumbo jumbo in Abramovic´’s Method? Or, The show began. I became completely absorbed, Russian Constructivist maybe-fakes, maybe- Shia LaBeouf and his maybe conceptual project oblivious to things around me. I found absorption in 42. Part of what we (I) like about fake stories student-work, maybe-unknown Malevich’s of plagiarizing? The question is too big to what I was doing, freed my conscious and released and art forgeries is duping the very rich. Because Adam Lerner did at the MCA in Denver in 2010. answer. The Queens’ painter was caught up my authentic creative imagination. My use of Twitter of the crazy money involved with art, because of Both shows ask questions of value, only Lerner in a narrative that’s bigger than him, that’s started a broad cultural discussion that needs to be had about plagiarism in the digital age “celebrity/social the risk in looking, because the way contemporary wanted to explore that risk in looking. He wanted about value but also values and forces outside media absurdity....” Uh, yeah. I can’t confirm if it’s Flash cards, 2012–ongoing • ink on paper, 8 x 10 in art might seem inscrutable, because of the my- to ask bigger questions of it. Is this where of him. true. It’s since been deleted. (20.3 x 25.4 cm). kid-could-do-it-ness people often say about it, Johnson got the idea for a show of fakes? 6 Perhaps the most disturbing painting in that whole these stories of fakes and frauds are compelling. 51. Art is so bound up in this system of values, male gaze tradition of nudes is Gustave Courbet’s One hedge fund partner paid $17 million for one On the phone, Adam Lerner tells me tied to names and authorship, provenance and The Origin of the World, which is just a woman’s torso, 49. spread thighs and genitals. The way he cuts to the of Pei-Shen’s fake Pollocks. a Big Foot story. At the museum they have authority, that it’s nearly impossible — maybe it chase seems to get to the point, but that painting was is impossible — to step outside them. Maybe so controversial, it was never shown publicly until 1988. what I love in these five paintings by Rochelle And when Jacques Lacan owned the Courbet in the Feinstein is that I see them trying to lay those 1950s he had André Masson design a cover for it. 7 Audio interview with Marina Abramovic´, Museum of questions bare. In this is something essentially Modern Art, Luminosity, 1997/2010. feminist too. Exposing the invisible lines that http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/ prop up our perceptions of art is about making audios/190/1994 manifest how power and hierarchy, status and 8 Wong, Winnie Won Yin, “Framed Authors: values work — all those elusive threads that Photography and Conceptual Art from Dafen Village”, Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, July 2008, serve to reinforce authority. pp 32–43. 9 Wong, “Framed Authors: Photography and 52. By the way, Marina Abramovic´ insists she’s Conceptual Art from Dafen Village”, p 41. not a feminist. And, while name and value(s) 10 Lerner, Adam, From Russia With Doubt: The Quest to bring some safety, some way of orienting Authenticate 181 Would-Be Masterpieces of the Russian Avant- Garde, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, ourselves around a work of art to understand 2014, p 69. it, they’re limiting too. Art could be our own 11 Learner, From Russia With Doubt, pp 62–63. search for Big Foot; meanwhile in Rochelle’s 12 Lawrence, Dune, and Wenxin Fan, “The Other Side paintings, you can also see a UFO hovering in of an $80 Million Art Fraud: A Master Forger Speaks”, Bloomberg News, 19 December 2013. Pei-Shen, copy of Jackson Pollock. the sky.... I’m With Her 155 Verbatim Hoc Moda/The Abramovic Method