November 9, 1984

REVIEWS:

KES ZAPKUS Drawn into the paintings which was something that had not happened to me in a long time. He uses politically charged (and correct) imagery but also knows about paint as an analogy to these same imageries. ENZO CUCCI Big, big, no, huge and enormous paintings that surround me and yet I found my eye wondering to the wall. Cucci is trying to drive something home but I don't know what it is. I longed to see some of the work done small, the dirt swept off the floor and put into the painting to make it more self-contained, easily portable (ideas as well as the work). SHAFFRAZI GROUP SHOW Wait a minute, I just have to put on this fluorescent pink right over here then I'll be ready to go...like Hockney this work, by and large, seems to be done by people who don't have the time to paint. And like Rabbi Kramer said a little bit of camp can overwhelm a whole gallery because that is the purpose of camp (and a good one) to shoot down over-blown ideas, shatter a few images, pull the rug from under a self-important demagogue. More Haring, more Sharf (no Basquiat who is missed, he now hangs around in Mary Boone). Ronnie Cuttrone does it the best and the entertainment of a show like this is seeing each artist shoot the other down. But the images have all been used once too many times (or, rather, they are images that were not worth using in the first place). JOEL SHAPIRO Wood "figures" now cast in bronze and iron it seems the logical commercial step but I don't think I would give the work a second look if they had not come from those wood pieces in the first place. I like the wood.

To be drawn into the painting. To actually look at what is there. I don't work that way. I want my work to be part of the wall. To just be "there" as a form (idea and material both).

Working on drawing from the cardboard pieces. Taking the eccentric ones and scaling them down. Too tired to do much of anything.