SHORT REVIEW, THEATRICAL TRAILER AND AN ANECDOTE
This was a chronological show that sanitized most of the angst and made absurdly false equivalences between the fascism of the east and the alleged excess "decadence" of the west. Despite some good paintings amid the cacophony, I am not going to let a scholarly poseur like LACMA curadoress Stephanie Barron (Barren of ideas) imply that West German artists suffered one iota under the Christian Democrats relative to the terrible lives of artists suffering under the East German Secret police – it wasn’t, you dumb dabbler, and if this was your point it was lost even more in this excuse to make sure you stroke all the big names. Your crock of shit pretext didn’t even try to adhere to its own premise in the search of star wattage. The wall text in this show is really something to behold in its pomposity and intellectually absent pretense. But it is always nice to see a couple of Baselitz paintings at soulless LACMA in its bloodless BROAD building.
BOTTOM LINE:
(Scene at the LACMA LUNCHROOM, Stephanie Barron has a light bulb go off over her head and announces her bright idea)
S.B: Let’s get all the big names, put them in chronological order and call ourselves geniuses, what is the German word for genius? Anyone?
Voice in the Crowd: Cayete puta!
I saw Michael Dukakis and his wife Kitty walking through this exhibit. They really plod slow through shows. Wow, they took like seriously a half hour to get through half of this show – and the place was nearly empty despite it being FREE FRIDAY. I shook the former governor’s hand in front of a Josef Beuys video. His wife looks quite hot all things considered, he’s gotten gray and has that neck curve that academics get from reading too many books. But being by the perennially sickly-looking J-Jo Beuys perked them up, appearance-wise.