Rita G., Da Best Curator In Town, kindly signaled to my attention the ongoing Michael Smith retrospective at the Blanton. The good news is it will be traveling to Philadelphia next Spring at the excellent ICA. So I'll probably get to see it if I travel back East.
It's been curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi. The Blanton has a pretty good encyclopedic exhibition program, and the ICA with the ever excellent Ingrid Schaffner presents a very interesting one too. The Barry Le Va retrospective a few years ago is a case in point.
Anyway, I'm overjoyed. I think Smith has been overlooked because his work is clearly hilariously funny, and in this country you have to prove some kind of (oft boring) gravitas for your work to be considered. In addition his performances are on the gentler side, closer to stand up comedy than the suffering and endurance one tends to associate with performance art.
Picture, from the Blanton's site:
Michael Smith, b. Chicago, 1951, and
Alan Herman, b. New York, 1944
Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/Snack Bar, 1983 (detail)
Photo: Kevin Noble
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1 comment:
Wait, who are you? I'm curious! (This is geezopeez, by the way.)
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