Ten Artists We Love to Hate

Here are ten fine art and performance artists soured by their actions—sometimes outside of an art gallery.

1. Carl Andre
Because “Where IS Ana Mendieta?” A question we all asked in 1985 when she fell 34 floors from her and Andre’s New York city apartment. Andre, a minimalist artist, told 911 operators that Mendieta had “somehow gone out the window.” Somehow? Andre was arrested and charged with murder but shortly after acquitted of three separate indictments: inconclusive evidence. So the question remains…

2. James Franco

Because HE gets a show at Pace Gallery?! Give me a break. Did we all forget about that fiasco with him and gender-bending performance artist, Kalup Linzy? Can we say clear demonstration of privilege prevailing in some contemporary caricature of Artist-Patron relations.

In 2011, NY Mag appropriately asked: “What’s a not quite established experimental artist to do when a handsome, eager, artistically inclined movie star wants to partner with him?”

Hey James, the art world isn’t your debauched foray at Sprang Break every other year or so.

3. Damien Hirst & Jeff Koons

Because aren’t they like the same person? Why hate Hirst? Well just ask Artist Jayson Musson’s, spot on alter ego cum art critic, Hennessy Youngman and if his delivery isn’t your cup of tea, see Hirst’s complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011, and ask the question: how many goddamn spots can one’s assistant paint, while Koons shellacs you a few dozen giant balloon animals for pacification.

4. Marina Abramović

Did you really just let Jay – Z stare into your eyes a la The Artist is Present and sing Picasso Baby to you? And here I thought your new institute was for the PRESERVATION of performance art. “I love the way Jay-Z stood near Marina and moved a little bit. Art!!” people, please I beg you just check the tweets.

5. Ryan McGinness

In the 1960s there was an art movement called Fulux. Yoko ono was involved, you know–all the names you love. They created these events or situations called “happenings.” Fast forward to the 2000’s. Ryan McGinness does artist talk at big name art school, shows slides of bubble, nude, and dress up themed parties in his studio quotationed as “happenings.” Sitting in the middle of one of his lectures one might find themselves asking: Is this really happening? Sound bite from McGinness on his work: hmmm, the colors, cool, patterns, skateboards, women, Africa, mmmm, SILENCE. Shall I go on?

6. George W Bush
Really just google it. GWB, developmentally, we’ve learned something here.

7. Bjarne Melgaard

Because we all need to be reminded of racism, homophobes aka Russians, and fashion. Then given someone to hate, then a rebuttal, then more hate. It’s healthy. Thank you Dasha Zukova and Buro 24/7 for the MLK day heard ‘round the world.
Also known as Racist Chair artist

8. Gerhard Richter

Because we all went to the MoMA opening of Isa Genken’s first US retrospective, this fall or at least read about the preview hosted by Phoebe Philo, creative director for Celine, in W Magazine. Isa Genzen was Gerhard Richter’s second wife. This former student-teacher team had a tumultuous relations and we all can’t help but wonder who stole that painting trick from whom, and why isn’t Genzken a Chelsea house hold name in the New York art scene. Every art school puck from VCU to Yale is rifting off her assemblage sculptures.

9. Judy Chicago
Three words: The Dinner Party. The Brooklyn Museums new permanent installation, triangular in configuration. VAGINAs are depicted on dinner plates of 39 of the most important women in Judy’s version of history. While one participants vagina is mysteriously missing, Sojourner Truths. Chicago’s dinner party took six years to complete with a less then savory use of “Volunteer” labor, all women of course. Judy, what version of feminism are you trying to feed us?

10. Clifford Owens
Is it the work that we hate or do the critics seem to have their own secret V for vendetta against Mr. Provocateur? The question remains, is this sexual or political provocation? One has to wonder why Clifford Owens, a performance artist, can posit such an essential question within a piece of performance work, which ran for 7 months at MoMA Ps1. The question being: why… does there not exist an anthology of Black Performance art? And you, the critic, in response typed up, down, and around the work itself. The reviewer seemed to be salivating at the iota of a chance that he, in all his privileged white maleness, might consummate with Owens. Lunging criticisms yet not at the work; labeling Owens a “threatening sex gremlin,” while the label might be better served on the critic himself. As of now his review reads more like a disparate missed connection: Man on the 7 train from Long Island City, “Unfortunately [you] neither raped me nor “fucked my brains out” for I am dipping in “sexual desire for the “other.” Sincerely your friendly Bushwick art reviewer, well at least he looks as though he lives in Bushwick.

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