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What’s New: Tony Smith

tonysmith

The irrepressible and exceedingly talented Tony Smith needs no introduction to most. A very popular U professor, he retired and wrote the delightful tome “Eff You: (or however we wrote that when we reviewed it so glowingly) Finally a Book About Me.” (Copies still available — try Phillips Gallery.) He tells us: “I’ve got a great show all boxed up and ready to go. ‘The Big Tiny.’ A drawing that took me almost a year of solid work to finish. The show, at the Downtown Library in January 2016 kind of treats the drawing like a sacred papyrus. Which it kind of is to me, and answers the four main questions people always ask. . . .How did you do it? How much is it worth? What does it mean? and, Is it art?

With that done I have successfully torn all meaning out of my life, and am in the studio trying to figure out what I can come up with to get me through this goddamn winter…Oh I know.

Attachment is an early stage of The Big Tiny.”

1 reply »

  1. The artworks that get the most status today, mostly inspired by the exquisitely disordered Marcel Duchamp, include kinds of art that a ) few humans bother to view, and 2 ) which don’t much affect those who do see them, including the artists who make them, and iii ) aren’t considered worth keeping around. I’d like to propose that the important arts since 1900 focus on drawing, only now coming into full recognition as a stand-alone art. Central to this is the cartoon or comic, which alone among recent arts has created a new visual vocabulary. (When was the last time someone executed a dozen artists and their facilitators for an offensive installation?) In all this, Tony Smith is clearly the new Pope (receiving the title vacated by Andre Breton), “FU: Finally a Book About Me” is its ‘Scripture by Smith,’ and The Big Tiny is its Sistine Chapel ceiling. ALL HAIL TONY SMITH!

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