Wiretap: A Walk through the Whitney, or What We Really Say When We Talk about Art

Beginning of article

--This looks different than when I was here before for some reason.

--That wasn't lit up. What is that.

--Don't scream, Mother, I can't stand it. It's lurking here, lying in wait, ready to spring at any moment. Quiet, Mother. Now you understand the state I'm in.

--These guards are so obnoxious. There must be six or seven guards in this place.

--To become a child again a helpless child, to have to be fed, to have to-

--This is the most famous work, the pants shitter. It's not caught up in this nonsense about taste that the rest of the show is; it's about shitting your pants. I think It's funny for someone whose work is about a blue-collar heritag of taste and value and esthetics to make these works and have people respond to them like they're his critique of Color Field painting or something.

--old and gray haired like that, and you might die and I should be left alone or the doctor said I might live for years you see, he called it "softening of the brain" or something of the sort--

--I don't know if that's really his point of view, but someone said this was about Color Field painting.

--I don't always know where he's coming from. The stuffed-animal thing--there's really too many of them.

--It's like a carnival.

--oh, Shylock--

--I myself had a dream about stuffed animals giving birth. Maybe the best way t see work like this is on the Sonic Youth CD folder Kelley did, or that kind of context, because then it's about an image Instead of an object.

--I think it's good for young people to feel that failure is available to them.

--What's the stuffed-animal stuff supposed to he about on an object level? Mixe ideals, or--as if somebody was a janitor and found a bunch of trash, estimating the value of it--an old trick; that myth of people thinking time will tell the truth about art. The only reason it wouldn't he a myth is because people really believe it.

I can't decide with these self-portraits If he thinks he's attractive or ugly. What do you think.

--You mean do I think he is or isn't, or what do I think he thinks he is? I think anyone that features himself as much as he does has got to be a raving narcissist.

--This one color …