When Does The Warhol Backlash Begin?

by evanmcmurry

I don’t know who Jed Perl is beyond the phenomenally cranky art critic for The New Republic, but he’s calling out bullshit like nobody’s business. Last month, Perl dressed down art museums for their gratuitous veneration of pop culture; now he’s taking the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to task for their unnecessary Warhol review—which is actually, of course, the same argument. We could use as many articles calling Andy Warhol overrated as there are Warhol paintings to overrate, and with the recent decision of the Andy Warhol Foundation to liquidate every one of his paintings, perhaps we are now at the start of a Warhol backlash. Given the amount of oxygen Warhol’s empty postmodern brand of art sucks out of the exhibition room, that’s nothing but good news for every other artist on the planet.