That’s what I thought of Candice Breitz’s work when I saw this cover of Modern Painters magazine. “Who is this ridiculous person, posing like some 80’s retard,” is what I thought. “Is this Candice Breitz?”

No, actually. Nor was it some post-Fisher Spooner ironic nightmare dance group but a still from a pretty thrilling video piece.

I have my tastes and pop-culture infused video pieces are not one of them. I rarely think about Michael Jackson and think even less about Madonna but Candice Breitz’s piece made the two seem awesome and dazzling.

You walk into a dark Sonnabend Gallery and against the wall is long horizontal row of about 15 HDTVs, turned vertically, each one showing some sort of nutty Michael Jackson fan in front of a black background—some are extreme fans (like the guy on the cover of MP), dressed up to sort of look like MJ, others seem like milder fans, they all seem to come from different walks of life; for some reason, one is a belly-dancer. And the brilliant part is that they’re all singing the entire Thriller album in unison, without any accompaniment, and they’re all really into it. You realize that Breitz must have put an ad out for Michael Jackson fans to sing along to the album for her in front of the camera (they’re all wearing tiny earphones, that you can’t see) and then she synched them all together so that they sound like some sort of insane chorus. The funny thing is that they’re all pretty good singers so that you don’t ever think, “what a bunch of loser wannabes.” Instead, you sort of become one of the Michael Jackson fans yourself and you feel like singing along. The piece seems to take away all of the annoying gloss of MJ and makes the music feel more personal and intimate.

The same is true for the Madonna piece in the other room. This time the singers are stacked in a large grid and are behind white drapery. I think they’re singing the True Blue album (it’s the one with “Like a Prayer” on it). And they’re all pretty good, and they all have a totally different style of singing but it all works so well together (they’re also whiter and gayer then the Michael Jackson fans). You end up thinking to yourself, “isn’t life great? Aren’t people just terrific?” Which is a very rare experience to have at a gallery in Chelsea.

If you go into your fridge and pull out some mustard, and you happen to notice that your mustard has won a gold medal from the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, it’s a good time. All condiments, in my mind, are improved if they’ve won some [obscure medal](http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/exhibits/panam/food/medals.html). Like A-1 steak sauce—it’s actually pretty terrible stuff, but it’s won, like, four medals so that makes it OK in my book. The more obscure the medal, the better; for instance, I’d much rather have the medal come from the Royal Viennese Tasting Institute than from Good Houseskeeping. Also, the older the medal the better—if the beer you’re drinking is still flaunting the fact that they won a medal in Paris in 1862, great. A sliver medal is better than a gold medal; you want to say, “keep trying mustard, you’ll make Gold someday.”

And it was pure hell. Drywall is remarkably heavy and I live on the 6th floor. And drywall doesn’t fit into the elevator. And it crumbles like a sonofabitch if you hit a corner. And it’s heavy.

…not much of a post really…actually my Dad helped me. Does that make me lame? Hum.

So I recently bought the big, huge Richard Tuttle monograph off of Amazon. It’s filled with hundreds of amazing reproductions. It has some good catalogue essays, especially by Robert Storr, who, if you don’t appreciate his floppy-haired, preppy brilliance, I don’t know what to tell you. Plus, for type geeks only: the adventurous choice of Scala Sans.
So thumbing through the book I realized—Richard Tuttle is one of the top 10 artists of the 20th century. Yes, that’s right I’ve just moved him to the top of the list, better than Flavin, better than Judd; in fact the best of the Minimalist/Post-Minimalist generation.
So you might be thinking, “Isn’t it lame to be compiling ‘Top 10 Artists of the 20th Century’ lists?”
Yes it is. If fact, the whole enterprise is completely subjective and pointless and basically all comes down to taste. And it turns out that if you do compile this list (which I have done) you basically end up with a list of all the artists you’ve ever ripped off. So without any further ado:

The Top 10 Artists of the 20th Century (not in any order):
Paul Klee
Peit Mondrian
Richard Tuttle
Giorgio Morandi
Pablo Picasso
Jasper Johns
Joseph Cornell
Anne Truitt
Chris Ofili
Mark Rothko

honorable mentions:
Gerhard Richter
Henri Matisse
Bill Traylor
Kasmir Malevich
Blinky Palermo

A typical blog post…
At first you think, “huh, Nicholas Cage is covered in frost.”
Then you think, “No wait a second Nick Cage, for some reason, is covered in beads.”
Then, “Yikes, what the hell is wrong with Nicholas Cage? Are those worms.”
Finally, you realize that they’re bullets, lots and lots of bullets and you think, “God Damnit, I’ve wasted all this time looking at this poster. I’m never going to see ‘Lord of War’”

So this is the first post on Bloggy and I must say that I owe Will Hines a lot for creating this web site. Sure, he could have laughed at me after realizing that I don’t possess even the most rudimentary knowledge of computers, but like a good lover, he was gentle and guided me through every step of the process. I am forever indebted to him.