Visual Art Mar 20, 2013 at 4:00 am

The Belly People, the Heap of Kittens, and the Death Shrouds

Edward Wicklander at Greg Kucera Gallery

Comments

1
Dear writer of art news and art appreciation, it’s nice to see you back in the saddle doing good for artists. It should have become clear to you that, in my mind, what you did to Charlie Krafft approaches the unforgivable and, in my view, may be yellow journalism. My read is you did terrible violence to Charlie. I really love it when you are on task. You have such good qualities to do your job. Keep it up. I’m thankful for your return to the right stuff.
2
@GFinholt: what a fucking patronizing comment. Jen is a big girl beyond your reach. I'm thankful you can't control what she says - go hug your nazi art.
3
My, my, breanne (comment 2), because you are a supporter of Jen, because I have criticized her, I must put up with your precious, churlish, hyperbolic bitch slap. In fact, I have moved you so much that you appear to have signed up, for the first time, to write me your one and only Stranger blog comment. I take it you are wearing your heart on your sleeve and, in a socially repellent mode, blowing your cork. So you provide a snide form of argumentum ad hominem to rescue your heroin as some kind of perfected diva of position whose thoughts and actions are above inspection.

The thing is, Charlie Krafft is a buddy and it is my responsibility to defend wrong against him. You have misapplied “patronize.” In fact, it is Jen who has patronized Charlie and you who have patronized me. You both have been condescending to us.

Here’s the thing, breanne: Jen, does have power, the power of the press and would best use it responsibly and not in the manner of much of the sensationalist ways of contemporary news media. But her main Krafft article begins from the first paragraph up as a major piece of propaganda and not with the sobriety of balance nor the warnings of good scholarship. The picture of the Hitler teapot, the headlines, the beginning text presses alarmist notions against the minds of the readers to jump to conclusions that the conclusion has already been made. Jen hides behind the concept that she is just reporting facts and realities of others and little of her own opinion. Like most folks, Jen seems to have immersed herself in the cloth of denial, the folly of a fantasy that she is just exploring a honorable curration of how an artist’s changing belief’s might affect the evaluation of his work, and that she is creating a neutral yet informative journalistic offering.

But , as by many of her errors, she presses the idea that Krafft’s appearance on a radio show of white nationalists and his comments there condemn him. To protect the way her article might harm his reputation on this matter she fails to point out that, of the three on the panel, Krafft comes off like a lamb, like a reasonable and open minded thinker while his company on the show come off something as extremists. She fails to point out how he takes an intellectually careful and open point of view on this show. She fails to point out that the reader should not find him guilty by association.

So one has to ask of Jen’s main Krafft article, what is she really up to? Surely not careful exposition. She could have waited to vet the ideas but she couldn’t wait to go to press. She attacked Krafft out of the blue with a warning that it didn’t matter what he had to say because she would soon go to press whether he like it or not. Sounds a lot like abuse of an artist by something very extortion like. Her article created a huge showing of media copy cats essentially parroting what she presented. These copy cats dutifully picked up her half-assed alleged damaging directed condemnation of Krafft’s beliefs and associations as the lead into their reports, continuing the message of kicking this artist like a can down the street of pop media gossip explosions. In the metamessages of Jen and all these media reporters is an attack on a Northwest artist in his autumn years who may be a bit of a curmudgeon but so was William Cumming and many others.

So much more can be said but Jen seems to continue a blithe optic of distance and self-satisfaction on the Krafft matter. All begun, apparently, by the complaints of an upset woman who Krafft had told to go stick it. As to the complaint of this woman upset by postings on Krafft’s Facebook page, Jen could have spent some time vetting the complaint to find out and report in her article that the complaints were not about what Krafft had posted but of those of person other than Krafft. But such careful research never developed before going to print.

An irony is to the above article on the artists, one who created the kitty porn. Working from her more common mode Jen supports these artists and makes only the slightest reference to the possibility that the work is kitsch. Other than this she delivers an article that strains to be supportive of the galleries and the artists. Why didn’t she do this of Krafft? I’m thinking that, as the years go by, Jen may reflect and come to accept that what she did to Krafft was a kind of media violence. She still has the opportunity to get real, make amends and post a public apology for this.

As to you, breanne, I can say I do respect your support of Jen and probably would appreciate you if I knew you, even if you had swishy wrists. Jen IS worthy of a positive critique. But I also have to say, I’m not your bitch.

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