I made this drawing in October. I think I might be psychic.
THE END OF THE SIGNATURE STYLE by Michael Salcman
Blake Gopnik's entertaining but snarky article about the Bailey/Ober art dust-up in Baltimore (a "more conservative scene" than Washington's?) misses some major art historical and ethical points. Bailey's complete appropriation of Ober's artistic persona is in the best tradition of post-modernist practice but significantly differs from previous examples in its degree of personal hurt. Bailey is not Jeff Koons appropriating an unknown (to the general public) photographer's work and converting it into a piece of kitsch sculpture. Bailey is not Andy Warhol taking an unknown designer's work and recreating the Brillo Box. She is not even Debbie Kass appropriating Andy's painting style and turning it on subjects of her own devising. Christine Bailey and Cara Ober are two artists of relatively equal prominence in the same small geographic market who are known to one another and who are linked by their mutual relationship with the same dealer and curator. Bailey and Ober are also both relatively early in their careers. This is not a "social experiment" carried out at long distance by a major artist on an unknown craftsman, this is artistic provocation delivered up close and personal. Bailey's post-modernist project in other media is perfectly consistent with the tired trope of the post-Warhol generation, the emphasis on a fluid and inauthentic identity. I can accept and celebrate the fact that the work of such major figures as Nauman and Richter can look like a group show, that Sherrie Levine is free to ape Miro. If Bailey had the energy and ability to appropriate "edge to edge" the work of an artist like Richter that would be one thing but to use a common "cerebral" strategy to invite ridicule of an artistic peer who lives close at hand, just to make a theoretical point, is unforgivable. 1/26/2008
- Dr. Michael Salcman
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