Margaret Keane - Vapid subject matter and high school drawing class draftsmanship infected with the incessant maudlin motif of giant bug eyes. That this treacley trailer park stuff managed to reach the heights of popularity is without doubt the number one reasons America is considered to be tasteless.
Morris Katz - Toilet paper and a trowel. That's what he uses to allegedly, "paint," with. Famed as, "The world's fastest artist," Katz has been known to paint just about anything in only a few minutes. Katz's paintings remind me of another activity that also lasts a few minutes and requires toilet paper. Perhaps these tools in greater hands would be worthy if it wasn't for Katz's singluar lack of insight into every subject he mangles.
Thomas Kincade - King of the Hi-Liter school of motel art, Kincade's efforts span a wide range of subject matter from the quaint to the saccharine to the sanctimoniously precious. I suspect he was one of those kids who hung out in Helen Gallagher back in the 70s staring at the black light head posters after smoking a joint in the parking lot with his friends. That he's managed to create a marketing juggernaut peddling mediocrity should give every school board in the country reason to restore art to public education.
His
Prince of Peace resembles Sauron wearing the Helm of Many Forks:
Peter Max - A classic case of the one-trick pony who couldn't evolve beyond his stable. What once was fresh 40 years ago has become unbearably tiresome with his current work more resembling Technicolor vomit brought-up from eating bad mushrooms. Pretty vibrant colors are no substitute for the artistic insight Max long ago seems to have surrendered to LSD.
Helen Frankenthaler - Blobs and lines soaked into canvas and given a title for the effort as if the title could erase the fact that Frankenthaler could never truly free herself to evoke the passion necessary to be an abstract expressionist. Notable only for her invention of post painterly abstraction, her work is routinely surpassed by artists half her caliber.
John Currin - The flavour de jour mixes Katz's technique with lurid adolescent subject matter creating a singluarly banal suite of work which includes such wonders as a
nude portrait of Bea Arthur. Currin's defenders cite his excellent draftsmanship and composition. These talents he does have but in the rarified air which Currin's reputation now enjoys, shouldn't he? Currin's work runs from the ridiculous to the disturbing: frequently venturing into the misogynistic without illuminating the genius of his impulse.
