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Brooklyn's Bushwick Scene

PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 1:20 am
by CAP
Here's a NYT take on the artist community in Bushwick, a little further from Manhattan than Williamsburg, and consequently a cheaper rent area, for the moment.

I was interested in comparing it with the art you see around somewhere like Hackney and my impression is it's less socially driven, more refined, more varied. What d'you think?

;)

Re: Brooklyn's Bushwick Scene

PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 6:24 pm
by jasperjoffe
from the NYT pics bushwick looks happier and friendlier than Hackney. I'll take ackney!

Re: Brooklyn's Bushwick Scene

PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:21 am
by CAP
Yeah Holland Cotter of the NYT picks up on Bushwick's chummy post-grad vibe, and as with visiting post-grad shows all over, my reaction is mostly something like "Hmm no one seems obsessed or desperate enough here to really push things..." And I think that's sort of an implicit byproduct of the art school system - everywhere. It tends to level out or neutralise eccentricity or outrage. Eccentricity is reduced to cuteness or quirkiness. Everything is kind of over-accessible in the art school system, acceptable, tolerable, rationalised. There's no way to be really angry,in-your-face or out there. Obvious targets blur. I think art schools these days encourage students to be meek, nerds, with some quaint little specialty and loads of people will find endearing.

Endearing is not what you want when you're starting out.

Cotter also thinks that art fairs have killed the possibility of the avant guard but I don't think that's true. If anything they've helped to define an amorphous taste that ought to be the target of A-G reaction. They're a good way of profiling the market as a whole (or hole). It's not about making stuff that's sellable or not, (a naive proposition) it's about using pictures in different ways (whether painting, print, motion or still). Talking about stuff that's being denied or mis-represented.

Hackney seems ballsier, rougher, in general but then again you look at Vyner Street and there doesn't seem a whole lot of difference... :roll: